Aliases file not working

[Richard G]

I've discovered a problem which was not present before.

At first you have the /etc/aliases file in which several users are forwarded to root like this

mailer-daemon:  postmaster
postmaster:     root
abuse:    root

Ofcourse you have to forwat this so at the end you will do something like this:

# Person who should get root's mail
#root:          marc
root:   [email protected]
diradmin: :blackhole:

But this isn't working anymore. Mail send to abuse, postmaster, hostmaster or whatever, is not forwarded to [email protected] anymore.
I guess this is already since a longer time, but just discovered by accident.

I tried doing the newaliases command and restarting Exim, but mail is not send.
You only get this error:

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email protected]

Nothing more. Seems that the address does not exist.

How can I fix this? I know about the /root/.forward file, but this should working with the aliases file too.
Any clues/idea's on wy this is not working as designed?

 

[Richard G]

Just discovered the following.
Emails to [email protected] are being forwarded to [email protected] as should be.
How can I fix it now that it will also work when not the complete hostname is used, so emails to [email protected] are also forwarded to [email protected]?

 

[zEitEr]

Hello,

As for virtual accounts (and domains) you should use /home/<username>/.forward
By default /etc/aliases does not work for virtual accounts, i.e. domains which are added into /etc/virtual/domainowners

Related: http://www.exim.org/exim-html-current/doc/html/spec_html/ch-the_redirect_router.html

 

[Richard G]

Thank you. So if I'm understanding correctly, I have to user /home/admin/.forward to get emails to [email protected] instead of to [email protected]?
But it's mail to root, isn't there an easyer way to loose the "server" in that email address?

 

[Richard G]

I still find it strange that this is not catched by Directadmin or changed in Exim by DA.
Because in /var/named/domain.nl.db (for example) you also see hostmaster.mydomain.com which is also not reachable in spite of the fact that it's mentioned in /etc/aliases.
So in fact even for the root domain which is used to install Directadmin, a forward for important emails like abuse, hostmaster and/or postmaster should be made manually? I don't recall having to do that some time back, by my memory could be playing tricks on me.

 

[zEitEr]

I don't remember to work it another way. The /etc/aliases file works for domains of a suspended account also.

 

[Richard G]

Oke thanks for explaining.
I can remember from 2 years back, I had to disable the "webmaster" and "support" parts in aliases, because otherwise all mail to [email protected] was automatically redirected to [email protected] (from server.maindomain.nl) automatically. But maybe that was a bug in Exim and is fixed in the meantime.
I will create the forwards, thanks!

 

[Richard G]

Well.... there must be something wrong... /home/admin/.forward is not working.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email protected]

How can it be fixed now?

And /home/admin/.forward contains this:

abuse: [email protected]

 

[zEitEr]

Try

chmod 755  /home/admin/.forward
chown admin:admin  /home/admin/.forward

If it does not help then check /var/log/exim/mainlog for errors.

 

[Richard G]

This won't work either. Not a single .forward is working. Maybe because DA is looking at another place for forwards.
No errors in /var/log/exim/mainlog:

2014-09-06 02:07:47 1XQ3Xf-0002g6-5f <= [email protected] H=ns1.someserver.nl (server18.someserver.nl) [46.4.xxx.xx] P=esmtps X=TLSv1.2HE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256 S=1083 [email protected] T="testing" from <[email protected]> for [email protected]
2014-09-06 02:07:47 cwd=/var/spool/exim 3 args: /usr/sbin/exim -Mc 1XQ3Xf-0002g6-5f
2014-09-06 02:07:47 cwd=/tmp 4 args: /usr/sbin/exim -oMr spam-scanned -bS
2014-09-06 02:07:49 1XQ3Xf-0002gA-CV <= [email protected] U=mail P=spam-scanned S=1496 [email protected] T="testing" from <[email protected]> for [email protected]
2014-09-06 02:07:49 cwd=/var/spool/exim 3 args: /usr/sbin/exim -Mc 1XQ3Xf-0002gA-CV
2014-09-06 02:07:49 1XQ3Xf-0002gA-CV ** [email protected] F=<[email protected]> R=virtual_aliases:
2014-09-06 02:07:49 cwd=/var/spool/exim 7 args: /usr/sbin/exim -t -oem -oi -f <> -E1XQ3Xf-0002gA-CV
2014-09-06 02:07:49 1XQ3Xh-0002gI-K2 <= <> R=1XQ3Xf-0002gA-CV U=mail P=local S=2328 T="Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender" from <> for [email protected]
2014-09-06 02:07:49 cwd=/var/spool/exim 3 args: /usr/sbin/exim -Mc 1XQ3Xh-0002gI-K2
2014-09-06 02:07:49 1XQ3Xf-0002gA-CV Completed
2014-09-06 02:07:49 1XQ3Xf-0002g6-5f => abuse <[email protected]> F=<[email protected]> R=spamcheck_director T=spamcheck S=1366
2014-09-06 02:07:49 1XQ3Xf-0002g6-5f Completed
2014-09-06 02:07:50 1XQ3Xh-0002gI-K2 => [email protected] F=<> R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp S=2394 H=mail.myprivate.nl [46.4.xxx.xxx] X=TLSv1.2HE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:256 C="250 OK id=1XQ3Rc-0000zl-M9"
2014-09-06 02:07:50 1XQ3Xh-0002gI-K2 Completed

Seems only way to fix this is to make real forwards from within DA itself. They wil get into /etc/virtual/aliastestdomain.nl/aliases which contains the content below at this moment, after creating aliases via DA:

abuse: [email protected]
admin:admin
hostmaster: [email protected]
postmaster: [email protected]
*: :fail:

I'm just wondering, I think the default line :

*: :fail:

is taking care of the fact that nothing works except if you put it in here.

 

[zEitEr]

I bring my apologies, my mistake, the file /home/<username>/.forward is working only for [email protected]

 

[Richard G]

It's no problem zEitEr, anybody can make a mistake sometime. Thanks for your effort though!