[Exim] autoreply transport (newbie)

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Author: Sergei Gerasenko
Date:  
To: exim-users
Subject: [Exim] autoreply transport (newbie)
Hello everybody,

I've been reading the Oreilly Exim book and when I got to the autoreply
transport section, I noticed that for the forwardfile and aliasfile
directors we specify the address_pipe_transport or
address_file_transport options provided we have a pipe or redirection to
a file in our .forward or /etc/alias. I started looking for a similar
option for the "autoreply" transport and couldn't find one.

Then, I read that for the system wide filter to work,
message_filter_reply_transport needs to be set as a global variable if
there is a "mail" command in the filter. But for a user ".forward"
filter, there is no such requirement. So, why does exim relieve the
requirement of specifying the autoreply transport in, for example, the
forwardfile director? Why allow such inconsistency? That is, why specify
the message_filter_reply_transport for a system-wide filter and not for
the forwardfile director?

It seems like almost all autoreply transport options can be specified in
the "mail" command itself -- all except for the "mode" option. Or at
least so it seems. So, how can one specify the mode from the user's filter?

I hope all of that rambling is not too confusing. Maybe I haven't read
enough after all:)

I do have a second question. I have a box that is named, say
"mail.domain1" and it is the mail server for, say "foobar_alias.com".
"foobar_alias.com" has "mail.domain1" in its MX record. However, "foobar_alias.com"
is really just an alias for "foobar_real_deal.com".

In my exim.conf on a completely different computer that runs exim just
for outgoing mail, I set "qualify_domain" to "foobar_alias.com". When I
send a message directly to, say "john" on "foobar_alias.com", I get the
message at "john@???" as expected and the "Return path"
contains "john@foobar_alias.com". So far so good.

On yet another mail server, say "mail.domain2", I created a forward that
redirects the mail for user "greg" to "john@???". When I send
an email to "greg@???", I receive the email at
"john@???" as expected but the return path becomes
"john@foobar_real_deal.com". That is, "foobar_alias.com" gets expanded
to its canonical name.

What is the explanation for this behavior?

Thanks a bunch,
    Max