[SOLVED] welcome email doesn't arrive to aliased user

dchmelik · 03-22-2022, 12:07 AM

On Slackware64 15 (stable and current) I'm not receiving the welcome message to my aliased user (and maybe some other system mail, not sure yet, some on stable but unsure about current.) It's in /var/spool/mail/root but was sent to something like root@z-mp.slackware.lan, which I didn't choose, but looks like postfix did (i edited it to say root@localhost.) I aliased root to my main username and restarted postfix, still didn't receive it. I stopped postfix, reinstalled sendmail, started it, but it said it was starting postfix! I removed postfix, restarted sendmail, still didn't receive it. Every time I did newaliases first.

Code:

#/etc/mail/aliases
#	@(#)aliases	8.2 (Berkeley) 3/5/94
#
#  Aliases in this file will NOT be expanded in the header from
#  Mail, but WILL be visible over networks or from /bin/mail.
#
#	>>>>>>>>>>	The program "newaliases" must be run after
#	>> NOTE >>	this file is updated for any changes to
#	>>>>>>>>>>	show through to sendmail.
#

# Basic system aliases -- these MUST be present.
MAILER-DAEMON:	postmaster
postmaster:	root

# General redirections for pseudo accounts.
bin:		root
daemon:		root
games:		root
ingres:		root
named:          root
nobody:		root
system:		root
toor:		root
uucp:		root
www:            root
ftp-bugs:       root

# Well-known aliases.
manager:	root
dumper:		root
webmaster:      root
abuse:		root

# trap decode to catch security attacks
decode:		root

# Put your local aliases here.
administrator:  root
admin:          root
apache:         root
mail:           root
root:           d

/etc/aliases is the same except has one line for postfix (not needed.)

Sendmail used to send you system mail without you having to do any configuration other than adding your alias if you want it. What went wrong here?
        On any Slackware server I use for email, I'll use postfix, but I think sendmail is/was best for PC, at least when it used to not require much/any configuration...
        I'm checking with the Unix-type command-line mail command, re-alpine, mozilla-thunderbird-78.9.1-x86_64-1.

Petri Kaukasoina · 03-22-2022, 01:43 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dchmelik

I'm not receiving the welcome message to my aliased user (and maybe some other system mail, not sure yet, some on stable but unsure about current.) It's in /var/spool/mail/root

As that welcome message is already in the mailbox, aliases can't have any effect on that. The aliases file is considered when delivering new mail. It does not forward old mail, already in the mailbox.

When the first package aaa_base was installed, that welcome message was added to the root mailbox, it was never delivered in your computer using any kind of mail delivery agent.

I guess Patrick has originally sent the message 11 Jan 2022 from root@z-mp.slackware.lan to root@z-mp.slackware.lan using mailx, and included the root mailbox to the directory tree in the aaa_base package. So z-mp.slackware.lan was the hostname of Patrick's computer.

dchmelik · 03-22-2022, 02:46 AM

Originally I thought I wasn't getting any system mail, then updated this topic... but I think I am getting system mail (w/sendmail only.) Yeah, so I'd just have to do alias/newaliases before reboot post-installation, or copy the root mbox to d.