Centralized aliases

[Mike Kercher]

You might consider locating your aliases file on an NFS share.  You could
then use cron to run newaliases every so often.  You 'd have to modify your
sendmail to tell it the new location of aliases.

Mike


-----Original Message-----
From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK] On Behalf
Of Bruno
Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2003 6:25 PM
To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
Subject: Centralized aliases


Long description, short question:

I have been happily using Mailscanner in the proxy + mail server
configuration described in the web site.  I use Linux/sendmail for both the
proxy (in the DMZ) and the mail server (in the LAN).  Users only interact
with the mail server and are never aware of the mailscanner proxy (unless it
catches viruses or flags mail as spam).  Quite nice. :)

I also use aliases extensively so that when I have to give a vendor an email
address I can give them one that is easily deleted if I find them abuse it
or if they sell it to other vendors.  Also nice. :)

One minor annoyance is that if the aliases (as well as every other valid
email address) are not defined on the proxy then the mail is rejected.  So,
all the email IDs and aliases have to be on the proxy.  But if any ID or
alias is not ALSO defined on the mail server then mail sent from the LAN to
that ID tends to bounce since the mail server (correctly) thinks the mail is
destined to itself but does not find the ID or alias.  So, user IDs and
aliases need to be defined twice, identically, in both the server and alias.
And finally here comes the question:

Is there any way to do the ID and mail alias definition in just one place?
Maybe have the proxy's sendmail and Mailscanner somehow validate IDs and
aliases against the regular mail server instead of checking its own list? Or
something else?

Thanks,

Bruno