postfix aliases file (in light of setup, sendmail, and exim)

Matthew Miller mattdm at mattdm.org
Thu Apr 22 03:18:15 UTC 2004


Since January or so, /etc/aliases has belonged to the 'setup' package
instead of to sendmail, and it's nicely shared between sendmail and exim.
This seems good.

Theoretically, the postfix file format is the same, too. However, the
contents of the current Fedora version are quite different. Perhaps most
importantly, it maps root's mail to user 'postfix', to keep it from
completely getting dropped on the floor (postfix doesn't like to deliver
mail to root directly, for security). But the postfix file also seems to be
missing a whole host of "standard" aliases that are defined in the
/etc/aliases version.

Should the postfix aliases file be merged with the main one (and removed
from the postfix package)? I'm inclined to think so.

Perhaps the issue of "what to do with root's mail" could be solved with an
:include: for the MTA-specific entries? 

Or, there could be a more grandiose solution -- at BU, for example, we have
a little utility which autogenerates an include file from members of the
wheel group, and directs all of root's mail to them. We found it wasn't
getting read at all on _most_ machines otherwise -- and that's likely the
case with a lot of home Fedora users as well. Could be done in firstboot,
too (although I'm not a big fan of firstboot as an admin).



-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>





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