use /etc/aliases or /etc/mail/aliases?

[Carl]

On 5/4/11 1:31 PM, Sam Varshavchik wrote:
> Dmitry Butskoy writes:
>
>> Genes MailLists wrote:
>> > On 05/04/2011 11:43 AM, Honza Horak wrote:
>> >
>> >    If I recall correctly - the old sendmail way was /etc/aliases - the
>> > new sendmail way is /etc/mail/aliases .. as far as I know that has the
>> > default for sendmail for some years.
>> >
>> >    Perhaps its a desire to be backward compatible with the 1980's 
>> ... :-)
>> >
>> >    /etc/aliases should probably be linked to /etc/mail/aliases if its
>> > still needed.
>> >
>>
>> Postfix (as well as other MTA) uses /etc/aliases (and used
>> /etc/postfix/aliases in the past).
>> Perhaps it is some generic place for this file for different MTAs (when
>> use alternatives etc.)
>
> And then there are MTAs that do not have anything like sendmail's 
> aliases file.
>
>
I believe that all MTAs packaged for fedora/rhel use /etc/aliases.  The 
was changed on sendmail builds some time in the past due to support for 
other MTAs such as postfix and exim so there is a central location for 
the aliases file for all MTAs.  Since the format is the same for all the 
MTAs packaged by the distros it is in /etc so that moving from one MTA 
to another doesn't require manipulation of the file or its location.  
Since all the packaged MTAs use system accounts for mail this makes 
switching from one MTA to another fairly painless except for the mail 
queue which differs on each MTA available.