Sendmail

Administrating Sendmail

Now that you have a working mail server there are plenty of tasks you would want to perform, such as: user aliases, blacklisting, specifying IPs that you will relay for, etc.

User Aliases and E-mail Addresses

One interesting thing about sendmail is that each person's username makes up their e-mail address. If you have domain1.com and domain2.com listed in your /etc/mail/local-host-names file and a person with the username: bsmith

The effective e-mail addresses for bsmsith are:

bsmith@domain1.com
bsmith@domain2.com

If you want bsmsith to also have the e-mail address:

bob@domain1.com

You need to edit the virtusertable file: /etc/mail/virtusertable
An entry in this file for Bob would look like:

bob@domain1.com bsmith

Of course it is not that easy. Every time you edit the virtusertable file you must then recompile it with this command:

makemap hash /etc/mail/virtusertable < /etc/mail/virtusertable

The virtusertable can get quite large if you must add several different e-mail addresses.

If you are an observant type of person you will also notice an aliases file in /etc

This is how an administrator would forward e-mail based on account. It is pretty obvious how it works so be sure to check it out. As an end user to forward your e-mail create a .forward file in the root of your account and type the e-mail address on the first line.

Administrating Sendmail - Part 2 ->

Article last reviewed: 10/09/2006

Created by: Digital Foundation, inc.

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