Sendmail autoreply with vacations doesn't work.

[Marco_162]

Hello,
I'm using HP-UX 11.11 and sendmail version 8.9.3 (PHNE_29774).
I need to configure autoreply messages with vacation message.
I make the following steps:

1.- Create the .vacation.msg file in the user home directory.

$ cat .vacation.msg
From: mary@kafu
Subject: I'm not in the office today

I am on vacation from March 8 - March 15 and will not be reading email
during this time. I will answer your mail as quickly as I can after I
return to work.

If you need help before I return, you can contact the Help Desk

Mary

2.- Run 'vacation -i' to initializate the database.

3.- Create the .forward file:
$ cat .forward
\mary, "|/usr/bin/vacation -a soporte mary"

The system doesn't reply the vacation message.
The syslog file show the next message:

Nov 22 19:05:23 kafu sendmail[6264]: TAA06264: from=root, size=32, class=0, pri=60032, nrcpts=2, msgid=<200411222305.TAA06264@kafu>,
relay=root@localhost
Nov 22 19:05:23 kafu sendmail[6266]: TAA06264: to="|/usr/bin/vacation -a soporte mary", ctladdr=mary (108/20), delay=00:00:00, xdela
y=00:00:00, mailer=prog, stat=Sent
Nov 22 19:05:23 kafu sendmail[6266]: TAA06264: to=\mary, ctladdr=root (0/3), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local, stat=Sen
t

Best regars,
Marco

[Robert-Jan Goossens]

Hi Marco,

Try this doc.

Document description: How to configure vacation(1) mail replies
Document id: N2X941209002

http://www4.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en_US&docId=200000007950534

Hope this helps,
Robert-Jan

[Ermin Borovac]

Did you run 'vacation -i' as user mary (not root)?

Please note that only one message per week is sent to each unique sender (at each unique host system). The people who have sent you messages are recorded in a database in the files .vacation.pag and .vacation.dir in your home directory. Files .vacation.pag and .vacation.dir can be re-initialised with 'vacation -i'.

Maybe you've already done one test, so sender email was recorded in .vacation.pag (check with strings).

[Marco_162]

Hi Ermin

I execute the commando 'vacation -i' as mary user.

The files .vacation.pag and .vacation.dir are 0 bytes. No change:

-rw-r--r-- 1 mary users 0 Nov 23 14:19 .vacation.dir
-rw-r--r-- 1 mary users 0 Nov 23 14:19 .vacation.pag

Any idea?

Thanks

[Ermin Borovac]

Can you please check /usr/bin/vacation binary? The following output is from 11i system; it should match yours.

$ cksum /usr/bin/vacation
1539878547 20480 /usr/bin/vacation

Have you tried sending email from another user on the system (not root) or a user from different system?

Also please try the following. Create a test mail file and feed it directly to vacation.

$ cat testmail
From root@kafu
From: root
To: mary
Subject: test

test

$ /usr/bin/vacation mary < testmail