.forward file seems to be ignored

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sat, 7 Jan 2006, Paul Smith wrote:

> On 1/7/06, Rex Dieter <rdieter at math.unl.edu> wrote:
>>>>> I have just created a .forward file in my home directory, but actually
>>>>> no forwarding is done. Any clue about that?
>>>>
>>>> Typically a permissions problem: the directory or the .forward file
>>>> itself have wrong permissions set.
>>>
>>> The permissions are:
>>>
>>> drwx------  103 psmith   psmith   4096 Jan  7 16:49 psmith
>>> -rw-rw-r--  1 psmith psmith 18 Jan  7 14:57 .forward
>>>
>>> Are they appropriate?
>>
>> Your homedir must have *at least* x for others(all?), else processes not
>> owned by you (ie, mailer) can't even read your .forward file.
>
> Now I have:
>
> drwx--x--x  103 psmith   psmith   4096 Jan  7 18:42 psmith
> -rwxrwxr-x  1 psmith psmith 18 Jan  7 14:57 .forward
>
> but no progress. Is there some alternative way (instead of using a
> .forward file) of redirecting all mail?


You're getting colder...

Your maillog will tell you that  the permissions on .forward are too 
generous.  Put your homedir permission back the way they were (700)
and make .forward 600.

For security reasons, sendmail insists that all .forward and its parent 
directory be marked *not* group writable.  It is possible to override this 
restriction using the DontBlameSendmail keyword in the configuration, but 
don't.  (See http://www.sendmail.org/faq/section3.html, Q3.33 or just read 
the README in the sendmail docs.

-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs