Philip's suggestion to rewrite the hostname immediately from:
user@hostname
to:
user@???
was good and would solve my main problem except that I now realize that
the '@' construct for domain lists in my configuration file isn't
working correctly on these Linux Redhat boxes (as far as I can see):
<57>pastis@ exim -bP local_domains primary_hostname
local_domains = @:@.cee.hw.ac.uk:cee.hw.ac.uk:cee:cee.hw:cee.heriot-watt:cee.heriot-watt.ac.uk
primary_hostname = pastis
<58>pastis@ exim -d10 -bt
Exim version 1.92 debug level set to 10
probably Berkeley DB version 1.8x (native mode)
Address testing: uid=0 gid=46 euid=46 egid=46
> user@pastis
Testing user@pastis
"user@pastis" rewritten as "user@???"
Address rewritten as: user@???
address user@???
local_part=user domain=pastis.cee.hw.ac.uk
domain is not local
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
[lines deleted]
I don't have this problem on Suns that I'm also running exim on;
there the equivalent address *is* recognised as being local, with the
same configure file. Notice also that the primary_hostname is being
set to just the hostname: I am beginning to think that the name
service isn't working properly on these recently set up machines
(running Redhat 5.0). Will investigate.
It also came to me that I'll need another rewriting rule to rewrite:
hostname.cee.heriot-watt.ac.uk (our old long form name)
to be:
hostname.cee.hw.ac.uk (our preferred, short form name)
but I can manage that myself! Thanks for your help.
[Gyan writes as an aside]
> Actually, with your current set-up, does the main mail hub then
> correct the domain and return the mail to the originating machine with
> the FQDN set in the address, and does the originating machine then
> accept it as local? IMO this is actually a Good Thing, to send all
> the mail via the hub, so that all processing, rewriting, mangling etc
> can be done in one place. Then you only need a minimal config file on
> each workstation / smaller machine.
That's more or less what we do but we only use aliases to force local
delivery on the server. That means that when a non-aliased
username message arrives on the server, and it is of the form:
username@???
then the message is sent back to somehost. Doesn't happen very often.
---
Question:
If a man speaks in a forest and there is no woman to hear him...
is he still wrong?
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