Re: forwarding messages

Armando Ferreira wrote:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> How can i automatically forward all the messages incoming to some users
> to another mail box? I've a remote idea that this is done with a file
> .forward in user home directory, but no idea about the content.
> Anyone can help me?


The easiest way to do this is to take care of it it
in the alias file. If mail for USER should be forwarded
to [email protected], make an entry in the aliase file
(/etc/aliases or /etc/mail/aliases generally) that
looks like

USER:		[email protected]

When you've saved and closed the file, call
sendmail -bi or use the newaliases script.

Doing your forwarding this way saves a call to
the MDA.

The negative is that mail passes through and no local
copy is left.

To forward mail and keep a local copy it's best to use
the .forward file.

If the contents of .forward were 
[email protected]
the same would be accomplished as in the first example,
namely that no local copy of the mail will be kept.
 
To keep a local copy, .forward should contain

\USER,		[email protected]


 
Andrew