Unix administration - Vacation works for "real" email address but not for aliases -- except for so

Author

Vacation works for "real" email address but not for aliases -- except for so

Jeffrey Silverman

2004-01-23, 4:54 pm

Forgive me for my ignorance but sendmail is greek to me. So here's my
problem, with as much info as I can think of.

I am running Red Hat 9 with the sendmail that comes with that -- not sure
of exact version; it has been up2dated a couple of times now, so it is Red
Hat's latest.

RHL9 does not have "vacation" so I downloaded and got it from somewhere
else -- the version I have is 1.2.6.1 and the man page that came with it
says "3rd Berkeley Distribution March 2000 vacation(1)"

So theres some software background for ya.

I have one user, "jeff" and another user, "diana"

We both have email aliases through our campus email system which I don't
completely understand; suffice it to say that we both have very similar
email alias set ups.

The aliases point to "real" accounts on my server, "real.server.jhu.edu"
(names have all been changed to protect the innocent).

When I run vacation for "jeff" it works if i send an email address to the
alias (e.g. to: jeffcampusalias@jhu.edu) OR to the "real" email account
(i.e. jeff@real.server.jhu.edu)

The vacation also autoresponds correctly for diana but ONLY if I send it
to the "real" account. i.e. to: diana@real.server.jhu.edu.

Email to diana's campus alias is not triggering the autoresponder! i.e.
to: dianacampusalias@jhu.edu does not trigger the autoresponder.

I have tried emailing from three (3) different accounts so as to not
saturate the vacation autoresponder with mail from one account.

I have removed and re-removed the ~diana/.forward and ~diana/.vacation.*
files. I have run vacation, "vacation -I".

I have been watching the mail log (tail -f /var/log/maillog) while all
this has been going on and I notice that log entries appear when the
autoresponder works -- for the above mentioned working instances -- but
not for email to diana's alias. So, for each *working* autoresponse,
there are what looks like 4 or five lines in the log describing email
received, email delivered, vacation prog called, vacation program sending
email. The ones to diana's alias do not include a line saying that
vacation is sending anything.

(I will include actual log snippets if requested. I am just being
paranoid at first.)

I am stuck.

I have no clue what to try next.

Any Clue(TM) would be great!

Thanks....

--
Jeffrey D. Silverman | jeffrey AT jhu DOT edu
Johns Hopkins university | Baltimore, MD
Website | http://www.wse.jhu.edu/newtnotes/

Daniel Feenberg

2004-01-23, 4:54 pm

Jeffrey Silverman <jeffrey@jhu.edu> wrote in message news:<pan.2003.11.14.22.09.21.709775@jhu.edu>...

quote:

> The vacation also autoresponds correctly for diana but ONLY if I send it
> to the "real" account. i.e. to: diana@real.server.jhu.edu.
>
> Email to diana's campus alias is not triggering the autoresponder! i.e.
> to: dianacampusalias@jhu.edu does not trigger the autoresponder.
>

vacation is worried that mail without the users name in the TO:
header is probably mailing list mail or spam, and doesn't reply
to it. There is a "-a" (alias) option that allows you to add an
alias which is also eligible for vacation replies.

feenberg isatte nber dotte org
Daniel Feenberg
NBER

Jeffrey Silverman

2004-01-23, 4:54 pm

On Sat, 15 Nov 2003 05:44:45 -0800, Daniel Feenberg wrote:

quote:

> Jeffrey Silverman <jeffrey@jhu.edu> wrote in message news:<pan.2003.11.14.22.09.21.709775@jhu.edu>...
>
>
> vacation is worried that mail without the users name in the TO:
> header is probably mailing list mail or spam, and doesn't reply
> to it. There is a "-a" (alias) option that allows you to add an
> alias which is also eligible for vacation replies.
>
> feenberg isatte nber dotte org
> Daniel Feenberg
> NBER

Very good. I will try that.
--
Jeffrey | Silverman
jeffrey-AT-jhu-DOT-edu |
Johns Hopkins university | Baltimore, MD

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