Re: root doesn't (and hasn't) rec'd mail in a long time

["Gary Hennigan" <glhenni@sandia.gov>]

"Hall Stevenson" <hallstevenson@mindspring.com> writes:
> My subject explains things best and I'd like to "reset" something so
> that my system starts sending mail to root for different "jobs" that are
> run. 
> 
> root doesn't have a .forward file, nor any procmail recipes. In
> /etc/aliases, before today, it was the exim default config file. Today,
> I added "root: hall".
> 
> Is there a debconf option that I may have turned off or on to stop
> having messages sent to root ??

Start by finding out what happens to mail sent to root. Try watching
exim with something like eximon as you send mail to "root".

In the past I've been bitten by the fact that I've set the mailer up
to add my domain to addresses in which no domain is specified. This is
fine for most email, but for root that may mean it gets sent to the
root account on your domains mail handler. For example composing a
message to "root" on my workstation and sending it, exim would
actually send it to "root@sandia.gov". This promptly gets sent off to
the root account on the MX handler for sandia.gov, which, thankfully,
isn't my workstation, but that's obviously not correct behavior as I
want it to stay on my workstation.

Gary