Somehow I can't see this forest, there are way too many trees in the way!

I have a Fedora 6 system running as a web server and use vnc from my desktop to 'manage' it.

What I would like to do is to have any locally generated email (eg: to root from cron jobs) to get forwarded to an external mail address. That way I can process (and automate) all my email from one place.

The linux system is running sendmail, although I have not done any configuration to it yet.

I have found one other similar request doing a search, but it did not contain a definitive answer.

Where do I start? (and finish )

Thanks,
Martyn

Sine you're using sendmail you can use its aliases capability. In /etc/mail/aliases, add a line like this:
Then run newaliases or sendmail -bi. All mail for root should now be sent to the specified address.

Unfortunately, using an alias does not do the same job as forwarding.

When the message gets routed to the new destination, it still is structured with the original address. Since this is a system on my internal network, it has no 'real-world' in DNS etc and the smtp server gets upset with it, believing it to be sent with a spoofed address, which technically it is.

Forwarding should resolve this (excuse the pun).

Martyn

SMTP AUTH solves that problem here. I need to keep the original 'From' addresses so I can see at a glance when mail arrives from one of my servers...

I don't use .forward files, but it looks like there's plenty of info on google, e.g. http://www.physics.ubc.ca/computer/e...tforward.phtml. Did you mean that you've tried this and it didn't work? Or that you want to be modifying mail headers as part of the process?

The .forward approach, in essence, is identical to the alias aproach, as far as I can figure.

But I could not get .forward to work with root, even after removing any alias settings.

The kind of forwarding I am looking for would create a new header and textually retain the original header at the top of the message. This way there is no spoofing going on.

Could you explain your reference to SMTP AUTH?

In the meantime, I am trying to search out all the default references to root and replace where possible. Not so easy when navigating thu the system seems 'foreign' to me.

Do you get any errors in /var/log/maillog?

I usually have my systems set up so that /etc/mail/aliases specifies that root's mail goes to an ordinary user's account. I've never had problems using the aliases database to send ordinary users' mail off-site. I haven't tried changing the sender email address as you're looking to do because in the set up I have here that would be spoofing (ie changing the sender address to make the receiving server think it was OK).

There's a very good reference for SMTP AUTH here at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=224543. I've used it and recommend it. Although the installation sections are Slackware specific, the configuration sections seem generic.