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The Mail System

One thing you will notice is that spam scanning is now done centrally by the mail server, instead of by individual users. Every mail that comes into the system is scanned by SpamAssassin using your settings. It is no longer necessary to do any spam scanning at any other point.

Creating Aliases in the New System

Creating aliases (i.e. something@yourdomain) is much easier in the new system. All aliases are kept in a single file for each domain you have on Eris.

For instance, if you run the domain foobar.net, your aliases can be found on Eris, in the file named:

/etc/aliases/aliases-foobar.net

The format of the file is easy:

localpart: some-destination

This means that mail sent to localpart@foobar.net will be sent to some-destination. Aliases can send mail any number of places - from remote destinations to programs. Here are a few examples:

• Forwarding to another address
  
  If you wanted joe@foobar.net to forward to suzy@creamcheese.net:
  
  joe: suzy@creamcheese.net
  



• Sending mail to a file
  
  Perhaps you want to send all mail to joe@foobar.net to a file in your home directory, because Suzy is tired of getting it:
  
  joe: /home/myusername/mail-from-joe
  
  (Obviously, replace 'myusername' in that line with your real Eris username)



• Sending mail directly to a mail folder
  
  What about sending it to a different folder? If you have a mail folder named Mail From Joe, you might do:
  
  joe: /home/myusername/Maildir/.Mail From Joe
  
  When sending mail to a mail folder, it's important to remember that folders on disk are prefaced by a period. If they are a subfolder, things get a little stranger - their name is actually:
  
  .[name of parent folder].name of folder.
  
  As an example, say your Mail From Joe folder is in another folder named Friends. You might write:
  
  joe: /home/myusername/Maildir/.Friends.Mail From Joe/
  
  When sending mail directly to a mail folder, DO NOT forget the trailing slash! It makes the difference between delivering to a file and a mail folder of the same name.



• Sending mail to a program
  
  Last but not least, you can always send mail to a program. This is generally intended for more advanced users. To send mail to a script you wrote called mailmunger:
  
  joe: | /home/myusername/mailmunger

The .forward file

In your home directory, you will notice you now have a .forward file. This determines what the last step of your mail delivery will be. By default, this line reads:

| /usr/local/bin/maildrop

This means the mail is piped to the program maildrop, which is a handy program for delivering mail to various folders based on rules. Maildrop is used in the default system to deliver spam to a mail folder called, uh, Spam.

However, if you want to forward all of your mail to another address, you can just as easily edit this file to read:

bob@saotome.com

From then on, all mail you receive would be forwarded to bob@saotome.com.

Any questions? Email admin at discordians dot net.