stanonik@nprdc.navy.mil (Ron Stanonik) (03/31/89)
We're running sun4s with sunos 4.0.1. We're trying to use the yp map mail.aliases (made from /etc/aliases on the master); ie, yp clients have an almost empty /etc/aliases (postmaster, mailer-daemon, etc), getting most aliases from the yp map. We have some aliases that are failing. Here's an example: boss:boss-user@coral, sec boss-user:\boss The purpose of this is that the secretary should receive copies of any message to the boss. (Aside: Why not simply boss:boss@coral, sec Because the sec will get two copies, one from the machine originating the message when it expands the alias, and one from the receiving machine (coral in this case) when it expands the alias. Why not boss:\boss@coral, sec The \ doesn't get sent from machine to machine, so boss still get's expanded on the receiving machine; ie, sec still gets two copies.) The problem is that when sending to boss from coral (where boss's account is), one gets the error "boss-user@coral unknown". Oddly, sending to boss-user is okay. Adding boss-user:\boss to /etc/aliases on coral also fixes the problem. It's as though sendmail stops checking the yp aliases (though it continues checking /etc/aliases) after encountering an alias that expands to the local machine; ie, boss expands to boss-user@coral, so it only checks /etc/aliases for boss-user. Not having sources, I have no fix. Just be warned. Ron Stanonik stanonik@nprdc.navy.mil