[Pkg-exim4-users] Catch all mailbox

[Marc Haber]

Hi,

On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 10:11:26AM +0100, Martin D Fraser wrote:
> On Tue, Apr 12, 2005 at 08:32:50AM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> > Hi Martin,
> > 
> > can you please subscribe to the list with the address you are posting
> >
> Sorry about that. I had changed some mail client settings for testing. 
> This one should come from the right place.

Thanks.

> > Can you document this in exim -bt output? I do not quite understand
> > what you mean.
> > 
> The -bt output is very large, as I'm sure you know. It boils down the 
> fact that I have there entries in my alises file:
> 
> postmaster: root
> root: mdf
> *: postmaster

I would alias mdf: mdf in that case.

> So if I alias postmaster: postmaster and move the routers back to the 
> correct order it will eventually match my real username, or should I add 
> an alias for the real username i.e. mdf: mdf

Add an alias for mdf: mdf and moving the router back will most
probably work.

> > This will prevent the catchall to trigger again on the second round.
> > 
> > btw, I consider having catchalls as a very bad idea in this time.
> > 
> I understand the problems and appreciate the concern, but I find it 
> handy to subscribe to things using a throw away address. I could 
> subscribe to this list with exim@mydomain and if I get spam on that 
> address I know where they got my address.

Try using +suffix notation. Works fine without aliases, and has the
advantage of foiling spammers (most of them think that "+" is not a
valid character in a local part and end up spamming non-existent
addresses). otoh, most web designers think that "+" is not valid as
well, so I frequently end up aliasing mh-broken-web-site@zugschlus.de
to mh+broken-web-site@zugschlus.de

> Thanks for the explaination.

You're welcome, and sorry for taking so long to notice your message in
the moderation queue. There seems to be some breakage on alioth's
mailing list system.

> > Explained above. Or should I elaborate more?
> > 
> That makes perfect sense now. If I had a problem sending to mdf because 
> that user had broken the .forward file, I could send to real-mdf and 
> skip all the clever processing. Is that right?

Right. Additionally, the userforward router sends error messages by
itself when it notices a syntax error in the forward file and uses
real-foo as target address for that error message.

> > > Secondly, what was the reason for putting the local_user router after 
> > > the system_alises router.
> > 
> > To allow local user names to be overriden by aliasing. For example, I
> > do not want my local daemon user to receive mail. So, I alias it to
> > root in /etc/aliases, which prevents the local_user router from being
> > accessed for the local user daemon at all.
> > 
> So, actual local users can have their mail sent to another local user 
> simply by sticking an alias in the file.

Yes. That is part of the idea.

> > > It seems to me that this may be a mistake 
> > 
> > No, it's a feature.
> > 
> Yup. Good feature to, sorry I doubted you.

no problem. Glad you asked. It is always a good thing to learn about
problems other people might have as it frequently points out things
that one hasn't thought of during software creation.

Greetings
Marc

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