[comp.mail.sendmail] Munging From: lines...

stealth@engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) (04/12/91)

I'm going to be running a machine that will be for use by people who 
don't have don't have mail-capable accounts on the Unix machines we
administrate, and will therefore have to recieve their mail at some
other mailbox.  I've set up the news system to change their From: line
in news articles to an address that they give (stored in .mailname),
and I'm wondering if there's some way to do something similar with
sendmail -- have it set the From: line to the contents of the .mailname
file.  It could even fail if the .mailname file doesn't exist -- it's
not that important.

Any ideas?  Thanks...

--
Mike Pelletier                     |
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les@chinet.chi.il.us (Leslie Mikesell) (04/12/91)

In article <1991Apr11.212112.4119@engin.umich.edu> stealth@engin.umich.edu (Mike Pelletier) writes:
>I'm going to be running a machine that will be for use by people who 
>don't have don't have mail-capable accounts on the Unix machines we
>administrate, and will therefore have to recieve their mail at some
>other mailbox.  I've set up the news system to change their From: line
>in news articles to an address that they give (stored in .mailname),
>and I'm wondering if there's some way to do something similar with
>sendmail -- have it set the From: line to the contents of the .mailname
>file.  It could even fail if the .mailname file doesn't exist -- it's
>not that important.

The simple-minded way is to set up an alias file or individual forward
files so that usr@your.machine works and provides delivery to wherever
the user wants it.  This may not be optimal if the sending machines
have an easier route directly to the user's machine, but it should always
work if your machine is capable of forwarding to them (and if it isn't
why would the mail be passing through the other direction?).
If you really want to munge the From: lines on an individual basis,
the recent versions of IDA sendmail are supposed to support exactly
what you requested using a dbm file for the substitutions.

Hmmm... How about just linking .mailname to .forward?

Les Mikesell
  les@chinet.chi.il.us