Author: Bill Hacker Date: To: exim Subject: Re: [exim] redirecting root email
Cere Davis wrote:
> Hey eximers,
>
> I am running exim 4.44 on a debian sarge box and cannot for the life of me
> figure out how to redirect mail that goes to the root account to go to a
> non-root user. I have tried setting an alias in the /etc/aliases file,
> tried setting something in root's .forward file but nothing works. I try
> debugging the user routing with exim4 -bt but I have never been able to get
> root mail to do anything other than get sent out as root@$DOMAIN....which
> is NOT what I want. Any ideas? Would be happy to send more diagnostic
> information if I knew of any that would be helpful.
>
> Thanks,
>
> -Cere
>
>
Dunno what Debian puts in a default/etc/aliases, but *BSD has a list of
'potential' recipients as long as your arm, webmaster, sales, etc.
all defaulted to either 'root' or 'postmaster' which is defaulted to root.
In a *minimum* of just one place you need to enter a valid off-box email
address.
root = cere@???
For example.
The above can be a delimited list with many recipients, and
it is also a good idea to have at least one other 'off-box' and one other
'on-box' address that is NOT root.
Exim has a 'never-user' policy that will not deliver mail to root. It then
never needs root's authority to create or write to mail storage files
root owns.
If it could become root for that purpose ..... !!
The 'on-box' address insures that security and error messages will be found
'somewhere' even if you lose the external network for a time.
The 'off box' address can be handy if your box is ever compromised,
as an intruder can be expected to try to erase his tracks in logs and
mail storage, but cannot as easily reach those already mailed elsewhere
by chron.
FWIW, I always do a 'newaliases' or 'makealiases' *even after* removing
/disabling sendmail
in favor of Exim.
Besides updating a database from the flat file you have just edited, it
will also throw an error message on certain major mistakes in the file.
