Mail Redirection

george jeffe at eniac.seas.upenn.edu
Fri May 17 13:11:29 AEST 1991


:
:All you need is a .forward file in your ~/

:Problems : It does'nt keep any copy in your mailbox for your reference.
:           It gets confused if you specify yourself as recipient.
:

you can specify a file to direct your mail to in your .forward

________.forward______
coworker at address,/usr/users/me/mbox

be careful ( at least on my sun's ..) the file must exist and be
world-writeable

according to the sun manual ( which is particulatrly cryptic ) you can
"forward" the mail to yourself with a backslash

coworker at address,/usr/users/me/mbox,\me

or pipe to a command ( rtm.. )  see also vacation(1)

I've found the forward system to be a bit high strung.  Make an error
in one entry ( such as wrong file protection ) and your mail may not 
get sent to any of the intended recipiants.  

 Also mail bouncing back from an forward-to address gets re forwarded
to that address in an infinite loop, eventually being sent >/dev/null
I found out the hard way, hmm I havent gotten any mail all week :-(
 BTW, before i get 100 rtfm's It looks like there is a way to handle
this but I still think it is worth pointing out the potential problem.


--
-george            george at mech.seas.upenn.edu



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