Forwarding mail question

[linkup]

My previous servers were Ensim machines and it seems forwarding works differently on CP machines.

On the Ensim machines I could make a mail box and it would get mail or I could go into the GUI and choose to forward the mail or I could go into the user's account and forward the mail. To the best of my understanding no mail would go into the mail box when forwarded and in fact, you didn't have to have an actual email box.

The other day I got server error messages that two email boxes were full and wouldn't accept more mail. I was shocked to see it was two email boxes that were forwarding the mail to another email account. My hosting company said I needed to remove the mail boxes and just set up the forwarding but I found that doesn't forward the mail...they seem to get gobbled up and don't go anywhere, perhaps due to the blackhole filter.

To summarize.

1. Do I have to have an email box to forward mail?

2. If I am going to forward the mail, does it also have to go to the mail box as well, negating the value of forwarding it?

From my perspective it is more like a copying feature, not a forwarding feature??

Thanks,

Lew

[Rickvz]

1. Do I have to have an email box to forward mail?

No, you can set up a forwarder for an address without setting up a mail box for the address. That will result in simply forwarding mail to email sent to that address.

2. If I am going to forward the mail, does it also have to go to the mail box as well, negating the value of forwarding it?

From my perspective it is more like a copying feature, not a forwarding feature??

If you set up a mail box for the address in addition to a forwarder it will forward the mail and store a copy in the local mail box.

[linkup]

It isn't working for me...sigh...

1. I have a domain that wasn't using any mail services, was a default setup.

2. I have not created any mailboxes

3. I set the catch-all to the blackhole

4. I create one forward, webmaster@domainname.com > my main email account which is on a different server

Mail sent to the "virtual" email account does not get forwarded to my other email account.

There must be something I am missing here?

Thanks,

Lew

[chirpy]

You would need to check your exim mail logs to see what is happening to the email in /var/log/exim_mainlog (on linux). You could also check that the forwarder looks correct in /etc/valiases/yourdomain.com. If you're not the server admin you'd need to have your hosting provider do this.

You should also use :fail: and not :blackhole: for the default or any other address that you don't want delivered.

[linkup]

I had never heard about using fail before vs. blackhole..what is the difference? On the surface, it seems blackhole just throws the mail away in to the digital bit bucket. What does fail do differently?

I run the server but I am not real good on the Linux side of things. Might ask the hosting company to review your suggestions.

This doesn't look like rocket science... seems like if I set up a mail to forward, it ought to forward.

Thanks,

Lew

[chirpy]

You can read up on why you should use fail instead of blackhole (or /dev/null) here:
http://configserver.com/free/fail.html

[linkup]

Thanks for pointing that out. I don't think I had a "fail" option on my Ensim boxes. Was only familiar with the blackhole option. Wish I had known about this before changing 30 domains to the blackhole.

Lew