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Re: *sigh* what am I missing?

2000-12-21 16:42:57
Sorry about the accidental double post. It turns out that my problem had to
do with permissions - thanks to Andrew, though he posted 2 minutes after I
had figured it out (doesn't it always happen that way?) - and thanks for
everyone's ideas.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pete" <plaven(_at_)ozemail(_dot_)com(_dot_)au>
To: "Sam Sgro" <ssgro(_at_)corinet(_dot_)com>
Sent: Thursday, December 21, 2000 5:29 PM
Subject: Re: *sigh* what am I missing?


Hi,


Okay, this has frustrated me for the last few hours - here's
hoping someone
can shed a little insight on whatever basic process I'm missing.


I must admit to not having seen the vaction recipe so I don't know
how it works.

But I did some reading through the bat book and there are a few
restrictions placed on reading the .forward file.

I didn't see anywhere in the book.. it was a bit hurried as I have
stuff to do on a tight time frame... where it says that there is any
required configuration for sendmail to use .forward files.  There are
config requirements should the .forward sit in other than the users
home dir.

One other restriction placed on .forward files that caught my
attention and may relate to your setup with the mailserver is that it
prohibits ordinarly users from running programs from inside their
~/.forward files unless they have  a valid login shell.

So in the case of most mail servers only providing mail service, the
user doesn't have a default shell since they don't actually log in...
is this how youh ave it setup?   If so this could be the problem as
I'm guessing that the vacation stuff may be calling either
procmail/formail to do checking/return emailing?

If htis is the case.. I'll try to put in the info I have here with out
typing the whole lot verbatim... if it's not clear then let me know and
I'll send it verbatim.. if it looks like the problem.

"This restriciton is in place to prevent ordindary suers from running
arbitary programs on the main mail server.  Some sites prefer to
allow users to run arbitary programs despites the restriction about
logging into the mail server.  At such site, one can bypass this
restriction by placing the special string

/SENDMAIL/ANY/SHELL/

 in the /etc/shells file.  If, for some reason you need to use a
different string, you may do so by redefining WILDCARD_SHELL in
conf.c.

If you enable arbitary programs you should also impliment the
sendmail restricted shell smrsh."

Oh well.. there it is verbatim.. the spelling mistakes are my own.

I'm only guessing about the issues here since it isn't something
that I have implimented my self....

procmail to no avail. Basically, my mailer seems to take no notice
whatsover
that there is a .forward file in my user's home directory. It is the
user's
home directory no doubt about it; vacation and procmail are on the
system's
path, both for users and root. Simply put, nothing ever happens. No
procmail
log is generated; no vacation notice sent. My system log never even
suggest
a (failed) attempt was even made, and no procmail log file is generated.

Just as a test though, try setting up 2 test users and have one with
a .forward file that forwards to the other test account... that way
you can test if it's becuase of the program call in the other .forward
files and it's due to the above restriction of sendmail.

Hope that offers some assistance.



Pete.

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