Options for the .foward file?

[Daniel M. Gonzales]

Besides other username(s) and my own username (\me), are there any other designations/options that can go into the .forward file?

[Michael Tully]

Hi,

The .forward file in your home directory can be used to send e-mail to anyone that is listed in it. For example, I want to send e-mail to myself but I go through a mail relay host, so I use a fully qualified address to send it. The 'root' account can generally have this setup so that mail is forwarded to various address such as system admins.

# cat .forward
michael.tully@mydomain.com

Make sure that sendmail has been setup correctly for this.

-Michael

[Steven Sim Kok Leong]

Hi,

You can also use pipes in your .forward file so that a script can act on your mail buffer eg.:

|~/sendrootmail

This will allow you to customize actions or filter rules to be taken on the received emails.

Hope this helps. Regards.

Steven Sim Kok Leong

[SHABU KHAN]

Hi,

You could also have something like this...if you would like it short..

In root's .forward

Your username only..(without the fully qualified name)

For e.g.
skhan

and in my home directory I have a .forward which has

skhan
skhan@mydomain.com



-Shabu

[Daniel M. Gonzales]

Michael & Shabu - Thanks, I'm looking for options other than the standard usernames. Looking for the "advanced" .forward options, if there are any.

Steve - That's more of what I'm looking for....thanks!

[Bill Hassell · Accepted solution]

.forward can contain anything that you can place into the /etc/mail/aliases file. So you can pipe the email to another command, send it to an included distribution list, redirect it into a file and so on. See:

man 5 aliases