Re: mail basics on a debian system
On Tue, Dec 10, 2002 at 01:56:08PM +0100, Robert Land wrote:
> I'm not very experienced with unix/linux and would
> appreciate some information on the mail topic.
>
> I have this one box system, using my general account
> 'rland' and sometimes root for system configuration.
>
> What I would like to know is if/how rland recieves mail
> actually ment for root, because I rarely do a root shell
> login. I couldn't find anything in the mail man page and
> /etc/mail.rc has nothing looking like "root:rland", only
> /etc/aliases created by eximconfig has these entries
> which to my understanding forwards all mail to postmaster
> and root to me which is 'rland'.
>
> What I'm realy unsure about is if _all_ mail, even the one
> sent by the lowlevel 'mail' program goes through port 25.
> If yes, then exim should do all the work and all program/system
> messages sent to root should reach me with the help of exims
> /etc/aliases file. Is this correct and how can I generate
> a system failure which would cause a root mail to test
> this.
I'm not totally sure myself, but it seems that your aliases is set up
right, and exim does catch stuff sent by mail. To test, I don't think
you need cause a deliberate failure. I don't see why you shouldn't just
echo 'one little two little three little pigeons' | mail -s Test root
and see if they hatch out in your own mailbox. Also there are various
cron jobs etc. which send mail to root containing fascinating messages
like "45375 45375".
IIRC the exim setup (eximconfig or something v. similar) asks you
where you want root mail sent, so you can tell it 'rland'.
Pigeon
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