Sendmail

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there,

I have a user who wants to have his e-mail forwarded from his sendmail account to his new internet mail account. Additionally, he wants a warning message displayed letting people know his new e-mail account.

I configured his sendmail account with the vacation status and included a message that lets people know what his new account is. However, a test message sent to the account did not return an automatic answer. I haven't set up the forwarding portion yet.

Is there something else that I need to do? The version of the OS is HP-UX 10.20.

[Robin Wakefield]

Hi Andrew,

Are you seeing anything in the maillog? Have a look at some other threads too:

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x1b61c1c4ceddd61190050090279cd0f9,00.html

http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0x28cae7726eccd5118ff10090279cd0f9,00.html

you'll find others by searching on "forward sendmail" against the ITRC Forums.

Rgds, Robin

[Christopher Caldwell]

Split the mail account with an aliase - send one half of the alias to the user account with vacation, send the other half of the alias to the user's new account:

fredaliase: fred, fred@newco.com

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there,

Thanks for the replies. I took your suggestion concerning the .forward file one step further and modified the /etc/mail/aliases file to reflect the changes.

I am still having problems with the auto-reply issue. Any ideas?

[Christopher Caldwell]

check the mail log when you send an e-mail to the alias:

$tail -f /var/adm/syslog/mail.log

make sure you aren't getting errors like "unsafe group writes".

BTW, if I get too sophisticated with auto-replies, I tend to use procmail:
http://www.procmail.org/

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there,

There does not appear to be any error messages in the mail.log file. The message is being forwarded to the user's new e-mail address. However, the automatic reply to the sender is not being sent.

[Christopher Caldwell]

-post the literal aliases

-the to: header of an e-mail that's not being replied to

-the .forward file (include an ll of same).

-the .vacation.msg (include an ll of same)

[Andrew Kaplan]

Here is the text of the alias file:

# Local Aliases
beatty: jbeatty@partners.org
chang: ecchang@partners.org
dean: sdean@partners.org
goitein: michael@goitein.ch
hartford: ahartford@partners.org
held: kheld@partners.org
kollipara: sashik@pocus1.mgh.harvard.edu
kozin: kozin@steele.mgh.harvard.edu
moulton: gmoulton@partners.org
niemierko: niemierk
root: gmoulton@partners.org, pgraceffa@partners.org, ahkaplan@partners.org
rosenthal: rosentha
sashik: sashik@pocus1.mgh.harvard.edu
smith: asmith3@partners.org
snow: asnow@partners.org
willers: henning_willers@yahoo.com

Here is the text of the .vacation.msg file:

From: Andrew Kaplan [kaplan@hadron.mgh.harvard.edu]
Sent: Tuesday, December 03, 2002 2:55 PM
Subject: No Longer At This Address

The new e-mail address for Michael Goitein is:

michael@goitein.ch

If there are any questions, contact Andy Kaplan at ahkaplan@partners.org.

There are no.forward files on the system due to the use of the alias file.

[U.SivaKumar_2]

Hi,

Have you run
#newaliases -i

after making changes to /etc/aliases file ?
aliases can forward mail that way
eg:
test: test@hotmail.com,test@rediffmail.com

In sendmail latest versions you can give a message that user has moved with new email address of the user.

edit /etc/aliases

test: test@hotmail.com.REDIRECT

#newaliases -i

regards,
U.SivaKumar

[Christopher Caldwell]

If this is the alias with for the "vacation" guy:
goitein: michael@goitein.ch
you're bypassing local delivery.

To kick vacation, the alias should be
goitein: goitein, michael@goitein.ch

[Andrew Kaplan]

Hi there,

I modified the aliases file such that the line for goitein now reads:

goitein: goitein, michael@goitein.ch

I also ran the /usr/sbin/newaliases command and did a test message to the user. I did not get the automated reply that I expected to receive. I checked the mail.log file and I noticed the following entries:

Dec 4 09:04:18 hadron sendmail[3067]: gB4E4H003066: to=, delay=00:00:01, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local, pri=60017, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent

Dec 4 09:05:28 hadron sendmail[3067]: gB4E4H003066: to=michael@goitein.ch, delay=00:01:11, xdelay=00:01:10, mailer=esmtp, pri=60017, relay=dompop.agrinet.ch. [212.28.134.110], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (<3DEB6FD20003F76D> Mail accepted)

Dec 4 09:05:56 hadron sendmail[3039]: NOQUEUE: [64.156.12.217] did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA

[Christopher Caldwell]

As root:

ll -d /home
ll -d /home/gotein
ll /home/gotein

ll /var/mail/gotein
more /var/mail/gotein