On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Richard Welty wrote:
> create a simple
>
> alias.default
>
> file containing a few basics (postmaster, webmaster, etc.)
webmaster probably shouldn't be messed with. I don't consider it standard
... but RFC2142 does. (I know a lot of webmasters actual use an actual
webmaster mailbox.)
> during the install script, look for /etc/aliases, if present,
> report that, if missing, install the exim default and report on that.
I like that idea of having a aliases file ready to use.
On Thu, 2 Aug 2001, Philip Hazel wrote:
> save some work. (But actually, every host running an MTA SHOULD have at
> least a "postmaster" alias, and probably an alias for "root" as well.)
I was also thinking that a simple awk script could figure it out (at
installation time).
(awk -F: '{if ($3 < 100 && $3 > 0) print $1": root"}' < /etc/passwd ; \
echo "nobody: root") | sort
But of course, that may break some setups -- so it would have to clearly
warn them. And it would have to tell them to setup the root alias.
Some common system users on my machines are:
bin
daemon
nobody
operator
uucp
Of course, there are a lot more; but these are the only ones from a
quick look at a few different flavours of BSD and Linux. Two other common
users are ftp and games.
Then aliases that aren't real users like postmaster (as you mentioned) and
mailer-daemon (or MAILER-DAEMON) to point to postmaster.
RFC2142 mentions:
abuse
ftp
hostmaster
news
nntp
noc
postmaster
security
trouble
usenet
uucp
webmaster
www
(and sales, info, marketing and support which clearly should not be set up)
But I wouldn't set up any of these by default, except postmaster and
uucp (common user) and maybe abuse and ftp. (Okay, a sample is at the
bottom.)
Also, it may be a good idea to have the documentation mention the
importance of having aliases for all accounts, because if you ignore them
they may start just receiving un-read mail and using up disk space.
(/dev/null may be appropriate for some accounts.) (Maybe the docs already
mention this ...)
Jeremy C. Reed
BSD resources, tutorials, news, software, etc.
http://bsd.reedmedia.net/
# /etc/aliases
# These are some standard defaults
# Be sure to look at your system to customize this
# Set this to have the root mail go to a real account; for example:
#root: fred@???
#root:
# common email addresses for mail server administration
postmaster: root
mailer-daemon: root
#abuse: postmaster
# Some system accounts found on a wide range of systems
# (Be sure to check your /etc/passwd for other system accounts.)
bin: root
daemon: root
#ftp: root
nobody: root
operator: root
uucp: root
