rogerj@batcomputer.tn.cornell.edu (Roger Jagoda) (03/16/90)
Folks,
We're trying to implement mail on our NeXT network and are
about half way there. We've just run into a few problems
that maybe some of you have already seen/dealt with.
We have a config. server and three disk-full clients (330 MB drives)
Now, on the config. server we have linked the following:
/etc/sendmail.cf@ -> /etc/sendmail/sendmail.mailhost.cf
and the config server has the name "mailhost" added to its
netinfo names. So if our server is called "server", we'd see
the following:
niutil -read / /machines/<server>
...
...
name: server server.domain.school.edu mailhost
...
...
("..." is other stuff like IP and en_address, etc.).
The config. server's sendmail.mailhost.cf has been edited to point to
a campus "smart mailer" if it can't resolve an address. Each disk-full
client still ahs the original sendmail.cf linked to sendmail.subsidiary.cf.
Now for the questions.
SPOOL DIRECTORY: Should we export the /usr/spool/mail from the config.
server and have everyone mount it as, say, /Net/server/usr/spool the
same way we do with /Users on the config server? If this is done, then
waht happens to the client's LOCAL /usr/spool/mail, do we rm -rf it and
a symbolic link to point to the mounted /Net/server/usr/spool? In other
words here, the goal is to have all the machines use ONE machine as a
mail server, but have it transaparent to the user. The above is what we
thought of doing but mail seems to fail when we try it from the local
client. We see errors like:
Mailer-Daemon, connection failed, permission denied
mail saved as dead.letter
(BTW, this is using straight UNIX mail as most of our users alreay
know that and shy away from NeXT-Mail...for now. I think as soon as
I pass out the mics they'll all want to use voice-mail. Do I have
to do anything different to get NeXT mail working? I followed the
steps in the Network and SysAdmin guide for setting up a mail server.
Clicking on "Make Mail Server" really just makes the sym. link I
described above (to sendmail.mailhost.cf) so it's no big deal. Is
there something else though?)
LOCAL MBOXES: There are two directories, $HOME/Mail and /Mailboxes. Under
the latter is where UNIX puts Active.mbox for normal unix messages. Under
/Mail is another directory called /inbox. What is this for? Does the
mail-daemon use this? If we go ahead with the plan described above, how
will the local users use these directories. Remember, everyone will be
using a mounted /Net/server/usr/spool/mail, should we also try to
export and mount a central /Mailbox or /Mail/inbox (er, which is used
for what again?).
ALIASES: OK, netinfo will take care of Net-wide aliases but what should
users do about their OWN personal aliases. There is a local
/etc/sendmail/alaises. Now, should we niload this in the "." domain
and leave the Net-wide aliases niloaded in the "/" domain? This
seems right, but, then what would be the point of having the local
aliases file, and how would it be updated. Do we still need to run
newaliases to make the binaries for sendmail to use? Do we do that
locally or on the config. server? Has anyone tried this or any
of the above, or are we totally screwed up and should start again?
Thanks in advance!
--Roger Jagoda
--Cornell University
--FQOJ@CORNELLA.CIT.CORNELL.EDU