Quoth Jeremy C. Reed on Thu, Aug 02, 2001:
> 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.)
I saw sites that have an actual user called postmaster.
> 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
You just used awk "if" where it wasn't needed! [insert holy war]
Except nobody, some systems have nonroot and similar users.
> 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.
Yes, many setups indeed will be broken. Most systems come with a
customized and appropriate alias file somewhere under /etc. On
some systems it's considered a config file of sendmail, and is
not installed unless sendmail is installed. In these days of
multitude of popular MTAs (exim, postfix, etc.) it's not a right
thing to do.
> Then aliases that aren't real users like postmaster (as you mentioned) and
> mailer-daemon (or MAILER-DAEMON) to point to postmaster.
I forgot about MAILER_DAEMON! [spank self]
> RFC2142 mentions:
Why does RFC2142 use all CAPS, I wonder?
Vadik.
--
We who stride like giants across the world and allow all the
systems to speak, each unto the other.
-- Chad Robinson, BOFH