[Exim] returning mail to mail boxes

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Author: Matthew Sackman
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] returning mail to mail boxes
Dear all!

I'm pretty much a newbie, though I have done programming under other
platforms. I've read pretty much all the exim documentation and have
checked the FAQs and the archives, but I still can't figure this one out!

I've just switched to exim, and the basic installation has gone fine.
What I want to do is to set it up so that mail that does not have a user on
the local host (for example, mail addressed to 'test@???', but
the user 'test' doesn't exist) is sent again, via smtp to my smarthost.
That way it will end up back in my POP3 mail box.

This is required because other people in my family do not use linux to
check their email, but as a family, we have a single multi-drop mailbox.
Because I'm subscribed to many mailing lists, my policy is to download all
the emails, sort them and re-send any that are not for linux-users.

Fetchmail won't (touch wood) download the returned emails again as it has
already read them, but the mail will stay in the mail box so that other
family members who use windows will still find their emails waiting on the
server.

I've thought long and hard about changing my email address, but I like
having the doman, and I'd simply have to inform too many people, and it
would cause too much hassle - from reading the exim documentation, I've got
the feeling that I can achieve it, but I can't at the moment!

In the main exim config file, under the directors, I've got the last entry
as a driver = smartuser. I've got the transport = remote_smtp. So far so
good! Now, mail that can not be sorted by the usual directors (cos there's
not user account for it) get's passed on to the smartuser. But then it just
sits in the queue. It doesn't go anyware.

Really, the mail needs to be passed on to the smarthost router, but I can't
for the life of me work out how to do this. I realise that this is a little
off the beaten track and possibly not recommended because of the
possibility of looping, but it's the only way I can think of doing it.

The trick is obviously to get the mail re-sent without exim trying to treat
it as a local_host mail, whereas in fact, that is exactely what it will
appear to be.


  Remote mailbox         fetchmail            exim
  --------------         ---------            ----
mail.sackman.co.uk --->  passing mail --> delivers mail
( *@sackman.co.uk )        to exim              |
           /\                                   |
            |                         ||-------------------||
            |                         \/                   \/
            |               not-linux@???    other mail
           smtp                (no user account)       ----------
           ----                        |                    |
      smtp.freeserve.net <---------- resent           sorted, filtered



I hope this helps, and that someone can help me!

Thanks,

Matthew Sackman

--
matthew@???

Using anything non-MS: RISC OS, BeOS, Debian Linux.
Enjoying computing.