postfix aliases file (in light of setup, sendmail, and exim)

[Matthew Miller]

On Wed, Apr 21, 2004 at 11:48:40PM -0400, Tom Diehl wrote:
> I do not seen this as a problem. Root mail on a postfix system will goto
> the postfix user unless you change the alias in /etc/postfix/aliases.
> What kind of solution would you want for a non-problem?

I think you missed the context.

It's a problem if we change postfix to share /etc/aliases with sendmail and
exim, which seems like a good idea in general. Presuably, then, you don't
want root mail going to 'postfix'.

But really, I don't think *anyone* wants root mail going to the postfix
user. As the /etc/postfix/aliases file says in a very loud comment that no
one ever reads :) the alias is supposed to be changed to point to a human.

We ought to, eventually, have some automated mechanism for doing just that
-- for postfix and other MTAs too. Mail tends to languish forever in root's
inbox.

Figuring out a mechanism for doing that nicely may be long/medium term. In
the short term, one approach would be for the /etc/aliases file from 'setup'
to have an :include: pointing to /etc/sysconfig/rootmailto, and have each
MTA write something to that file (probably "root" for exim or sendmail, and
"postfix" for postfix) if it doesn't already exist.

Or, /etc/rootmaillist, and have /etc/sysconfig/rootmaillist be a config file
for a clever program which could (optionally) autogenerate the alias list in
different ways. (From group membership, from se linux roles, from a static
list, or whatever.)

The rootmailto approach is what we currently do at BU, with a kludgy script
that generates the contents from the members of the wheel group
periodically; the more sophisticated rootmaillist idea is in development.

Hmmm. "rootalias" might be a better name.


-- 
Matthew Miller           mattdm at mattdm.org        <http://www.mattdm.org/>
Boston University Linux      ------>                <http://linux.bu.edu/>