[Techtalk] Re: Setting up mailserver..

[Mary]

On Wed, Mar 27, 2002 at 02:42:47PM +0100, Alinda wrote:
> So my current work-around is that I let kat at xenaica.net be sent to
> somebox at gmx.net, Jill at xenaica.net be sent to somebox at myrealbox.com and
> Sandra at xenaica.net to somebox at subdimension.com. The mail-server now
> collects from somebox at gmx.net for Kat, from sombox at myrealbox.com for
> Jill, and from somebox at subdimension.com for Sandra, and collects from
> the ISP and from the domain hoster, all additional email trying to
> find some reference to one of us according to sorting rules and if all
> of them fail it sends them to every mail account on my mail-server.
> 
> So my real question is, how do you get the mail-server configured in
> such a way that like ISP mailboxes, they can distinguish where the
> mailing lists and the bcc'ed mails need to go. Properly adressed mail
> is no problem at all.

I must say I'm surprised that this doesn't happen already, it should be
the default behaviour of an MTA to write to the mail spool only of the
appropriate user (in an SMTP session, there is a line MAIL
 TO:linuxchix at puzzling.org which is totally independent of the To:
header or any other header, so there is a point at which the MTA gets
*told* who the mail is for. Otherwise imagine how bad it would be when a
Hotmail user subscribed to a mailing list :) ).

What MTA are you using? What program are you using to fetch the mail
from the servers? What 'sorting program' are you using, and were you
using this program when you were the primary MX?

There are two solutions that I can think of:

 * Run the program 'fetchmail' as each of your users, with each
   fetchmail fetching only their mailbox. There might be other programs
   that are more suitable to group configuration than fetchmail, does
   anyone have any better ideas?

 * Tell your sorting program to sort using the Received headers not the
   To or Cc headers. The Received headers always *seem to* (I haven't
   read the relevant Request For Comment, so I don't know if this is
   *always* the case) include the address of the recipient. Have a look
   at the header of this mail, for example.

But it would be interesting to find out why your system has such strange
behaviour in the first place. Mailers are designed to be able to handle
 Bcc: and mailing list subscription gracefully.

-Mary.