On Mon, 27 Oct 1997, Daniel Ryde wrote:
> I have some users with /dev/null as homedir to prevent shellaccess.
> They only have pop mailbox access. This gives an error in the userforward
> director and then the mail is frozen:
>
> 1997-10-27 13:04:11 0xPkeI-0004IF-00 == pl@??? D=userforward
> defer (-1): userforward director failed to open /dev/null/.forward: Not a
> directory
> 1997-10-27 13:04:11 0xPkeI-0004IF-00 Frozen
>
> Is this a feature, or? Should'nt it just fail and continue with the next
> director?
It's a feature. Exim tries hard not to pretend a .forward file doesn't
exist when in fact there is some problem accessing it, for example, if
it's NFS mounted and the mount is broken. So it only believes there is
no .forward when it gets an ENOENT error on trying to open it.
I suppose it could perhaps regard "not a directory" as a positive
indication that there is no .forward file, though I'm not sure I'm
convinced. Remember that the forwardfile driver is used for things other
than user's personal .forward files, and in those cases such an error
might well indicate a configuration problem.
I thought the way to prevent shell access was to set up the user's
*shell* as something like /dev/null rather than their home directory?
You can, however, cope with this if you want to, though it's a bit
contorted. Set up a localuser director with the match_directory option
before the forwardfile director, in order to pick off those users before
it tries to look for their .forward files.
> Another question which I could'nt find the answer in the docs:
> I have some frozen mails from mailerdaemons that were refused as spam.
> They were originally sent by a spammer that used us as mailrelay with an
> nonexistent fromaddress. I swiched to exim to stop that.
> And now, how am I supposed to trash these frozen mail? Is it just to 'rm'
> them from the input spool?
You can if you like. For frozen mails that is safe, as Exim won't be
looking at them. However, it is safer to use a call like
exim -Mrm <message id's>
or the equivalent from the eximon menu, because that interlocks with
Exim. (You have to be an "admin user" to be permitted to do this.)
Notice also the "auto_thaw" option and the ignore_errmsg_errors and
ignore_errmsg_errors_after options, various settings of which can cause
Exim automatically to clean up this junk after a time.
--
Philip Hazel University Computing Service,
ph10@??? New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
P.Hazel@??? England. Phone: +44 1223 334714
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