[comp.unix.aix] How to get copy of bad mail to postmaster?

jimr@maths.su.oz.au (Jim Richardson) (08/15/90)

Under IBM RISC/6000 AIX 3.1, how do you get sendmail to send a copy of
undeliverable mail to the postmaster?

I have added the options

	OPpostmaster
	Om

to /usr/lib/sendmail.cf, changed the appropriate line in /usr/lib/aliases
from

	postmaster:root

to

	postmaster: root, jimr

and done a kill -1 on the sendmail process to make it reconfigure.

However, mail to a nonexistent user is still just bounced to the sender; no 
copy is sent to either root or jimr.

The alias "postmaster" works: mail sent explicitly to it goes to both root
and jimr.  So I suspect the "OPpostmaster" option is the problem.  This is
undocumented under BSD4.3, but is present in all the versions of sendmail
I've come across before the AIX one.

Apologies for not having RTFM, but the CD-ROM is pretty hard to navigate
through and that's all we've got.

Thanks in advance for any help.
--
Jim Richardson
Department of Pure Mathematics, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Internet: jimr@maths.su.oz.au  Phone: +61 2 692 2232  FAX: +61 2 692 4534

jeffe@sandino.austin.ibm.com (Peter Jeffe 512.823.4091) (08/18/90)

In article <1990Aug15.044541.7835@metro.ucc.su.OZ.AU> jimr@maths.su.oz.au (Jim Richardson) writes:
>Under IBM RISC/6000 AIX 3.1, how do you get sendmail to send a copy of
>undeliverable mail to the postmaster?
>
>I have added the options
>
>	OPpostmaster
>...
>However, mail to a nonexistent user is still just bounced to the sender;...

Defining the P option works just fine.  Jim's case was sending mail to
a bad user on the server machine; since the client sendmail is notified
immediately by the server that the user is unknown, the *client's*
error-disposal logic determines who gets the bounced mail.  If the
server receives mail that is then undeliverable (e.g., mail to
"@server:baduser@host"), then *its* error-disposal logic comes into
play.  So defining the P option on the server has no effect on mail
that is undeliverable at the client.
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Peter Jeffe   ...uunet!cs.utexas.edu!ibmaus!auschs!sandino.austin.ibm.com!jeffe
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