Quoth David Latter on Mon, Feb 15, 1999:
> We are about to move all out mail onto its own linux server. We want to keep
> the same passwd file as the other servers in out network but we didn't want
> to have to recreate all the home dirs, just copy the passwd file across so
> pop server can authenticate the users for receiving mail.
Why do you copy the password file? I prefer using NIS, Hesiod,
or similar mechanisms in this case, because if you have more than
N machines (where N is about 3), copying the files can be painful.
> At first the
> only problem I could see with exim would be the .forward file in the users
> home dirs, as there was only about 20 of these files used to redirect mail I
> thought it would be better to just make an alias file instead.
Maybe it would be nice if you mount the users' home directories
via NFS, so they will still be able to use their .forward files
(and maybe you would like to enable the Exim filtering feature
(see chapter 23 of Exim 2.10 manual), it's pretty nice). On our
system, the home directories are (auto-)mounted everywhere, and
the passwd and group files are distributed centrally, and I think
that this is the correct approach to this problem.
Some users may want to use the Exim filter or procmail to sort
their incoming mail to different mailboxes, so a simple aliases
file will not be enough in these cases. One thing that you can
do is to set the "file" and "file_directory" options of the
forwardfile director to something like:
file_directory = /var/mail/forwards
file = ${local_part}.forward
and let the users to put their forward files there (via FTP or
something). But exporting home directories is, IMO, better.
> What fixed my problem was to add the line home_directory =
> /var/spool/mail/tmphome in the following director.
>
> # This director matches local user mailboxes.
>
> localuser:
> driver = localuser
> transport = local_delivery
> home_directory = /var/spool/mail/tmphome
> end
Umm, that's a little weird -- maybe Philip will shed some light
on it. Does localuser check for the existance of the user's home
dir?
> I do like the manual but if Vadik had answered me like you did I would have
> been fine about it and only felt stupid for not seeing the simple answer and
> not hurt for being implied I was and idiot wasting everyones time.
I'm known to say such things.
Vadik.
--
Taunt not the sysadmin, for he can become you and make your life
interesting.
--
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