how to create redirect only email address??

Hi!

At this moment I only have sendmail installed on my linode for sending email purposes. No other email software is installed.

But I want to create a few redirect only email addresses and I dont know what's the best software for this.

I dont want to have real boxes, no user will authenticate on my linode for email, only need to redirect incoming mail for a few emails (i.e. all incoming emails to user@domain.com will redirect to user@gmaill.com).

I would thank you very much if someone can tell me how to do this on my Debian lenny.

10 Replies

Why not use Google?

http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/group/index.html

Point your MX records there and you're done. Just an option, I don't know what else you're trying to do though.

I use google apps for some domain. But I have many domains and dont want to have all of them with that system.

When I used cpanel in the past, I have two options for making email addresses.

1. To create a full mailbox with an user and password.

2. To create a redirect only address, no user associated. Simply you put a user@yourdomain.com address and tells cpanel where you want to redirect the emails for that address, nothing stored at your server, all email for that address simply gets bounced to an external email. So you can create something like user@yourdomain.com –> user@gmail.com

I want to do something like 2 without installing cpanel or other control panels…

Maybe this will be very easy, but I'm new on the "shell only" administration and I'm totally lost about this topic.

Just a hint: add a new entry to /etc/aliases and run 'newaliases'. Then the configuration with 'sendmail -bv alias-address@domain.com'

Edit: sorry (it's early in the morning here yet) but the aliases file is only for local users, so it probably won't fit your needs.

Thanks for your help melon ;)

I found this:

http://www.sendmail.org/tips/virtualHosting

And maybe is the best option for me, but I cant get it working until now… :(

UPDATE:

I'm one step closer… finally I managed to tell sendmail to forward emails for one virtual user…

when I put sendmail -v -bv myuser@mydomain.com I get this myuser@mydomain.com... deliverable: mailer esmtp, host gmail.com., user myuser@gmail.com

So it seems that sendmail is doing the job… but I'm not receiving anything on my gmail account when sending some test email from another external account… :cry:

After some days I have received this email on the sender (from) account:

> Technical details of temporary failure:

The recipient server did not accept our requests to connect. Learn more at http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answ … nswer=7720">http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=7720

[mail..com. (10): Connection dropped]

After reading the FAQ provided in that link, I have checked all but I cant find the problem…

Any ideas?

````
mwalling@youtoo:~$ telnet mail.diariocylon.com smtp
Trying 97.107.139.94…
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

````

Check your firewall, make sure sendmail is running, etc.

Edit: I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank you for not redacting your domain name from that error message, as it makes debugging much easier for others. (I was able to quickly open up a terminal and attempt a SMTP dialog, and found a probable source in less time then it took me to write this rant). I just wish others would do the same.

@mwalling:

Check your firewall, make sure sendmail is running, etc.

thanks for your reply.

service is running (i can send from inside the server). so i'll take a look to the firewall.

> Edit: I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank you for not redacting your domain name from that error message, as it makes debugging much easier for others.

Well, now with your help is not needed to show the real domain anymore, so please, can you edit the domain name in the quote text on your previous reply? :)

I'll thank you very much.

Why, so you can hide behind a transparent veil of secrecy?

Also, unless you are "Dotster, Inc.", you don't own domain.com. If you're going to obscifate your domain, please consult RFC 2606.

@mwalling:

Why, so you can hide behind a transparent veil of secrecy?

Also, unless you are "Dotster, Inc.", you don't own domain.com. If you're going to obscifate your domain, please consult RFC 2606.

I put my domain to help debugging, now I know what is the problem and I thank you about that, so it's not necessary to have my domain name here forever.

As owner of my domain, I wanted to remove it from the thread, I dont know why you are refusing to do that…

I'm not taking sides either way on this, but keep in mind it would do remarkably little good to redact the information at this point – this is a public forum, and the information is already out there in various forms. Attempts to remove formerly-public information are often counterproductive, to boot.

You could travel back in time and not publish the information, but then you'd probably still not have a solution :-)

(Also, example.com is the domain to use for documentation/redaction purposes; domain.com is a valid domain name, and a quality smart-ass would troubleshoot that instead. See RFC 2606.)

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