Question regarding automatic forwarding of email

[David Spencer]

Guys, I wrote to the list last month regarding this question. I
never really got an answer and I still need to figure this out. The
version of MultiNet in question is 5.1 and it's running on AXP/VMS
7.2-1.

The rules for SMTP_SERVER_REJECT. have always confounded me. I
*think* it can do what I want but I'm not so sure. What I do
know is that I need a little help. Here's the situation:

I'm hosting a domain (let's call it thedomain.com) for web service
that has an MX record that points to another server (at
mail.thedomain.com). As many of you are probably aware, there are a
number of clueless email clients that ignore the MX entry in the DNS
and attempt to deliver email to the IP in the A record.

What I'd like to do is write a rule to forward all email that arrives
for thedomain.com to their box at mail.thedomain.com . Yes, I realize
that the popular opinion is that this mail doesn't deserve to live.
However, I really would like to do this anyway. I've tried a couple
of things so far but without luck. Who knows the answer?


Thanks so much,


-- Dave Spencer, PageWeavers

[Jeremy Begg]

Hi David,

Post by David Spencer
Guys, I wrote to the list last month regarding this question. I
never really got an answer and I still need to figure this out. The
version of MultiNet in question is 5.1 and it's running on AXP/VMS
7.2-1.
The rules for SMTP_SERVER_REJECT. have always confounded me. I
*think* it can do what I want but I'm not so sure. What I do

I've not done much with this file but I don't think it is up to the task.

Post by David Spencer
I'm hosting a domain (let's call it thedomain.com) for web service
that has an MX record that points to another server (at
mail.thedomain.com). As many of you are probably aware, there are a
number of clueless email clients that ignore the MX entry in the DNS
and attempt to deliver email to the IP in the A record.
What I'd like to do is write a rule to forward all email that arrives
for thedomain.com to their box at mail.thedomain.com . Yes, I realize
that the popular opinion is that this mail doesn't deserve to live.
However, I really would like to do this anyway. I've tried a couple
of things so far but without luck. Who knows the answer?

The only rule which could help is the 'n' rule but I don't see any mechanism
to automatically forward *@thedomain.com to *@mail.thedomain.com. It's not
obvious you can have the "%s" subsitution in the ACTION-DATA part, and my
reading of the documentation is that you can't substitute the localpart of
the address anyway. (I.E. if the mail is addressed to '***@thedomain.com'
I don't think you can substitute just "fred" into the new destination
address.)

This is the sort of thing that PMDF excels at.

If the usernames (part to the left of the '@') for thedomain.com are
different to the usernames for the host which runs the website, you could
set up mail forwarding for those addresses, either in the MultiNet SMTP
alias file or in VMS MAIL.

Incidentally, I'd have serious misgivings about accepting mail from a client
which ignores the MX record. Such mail is almost always spam. The only
exception should be trusted hosts (i.e. fixed IP) or clients using
authenticated SMTP (which MultiNet can't do).

Regards,

Jeremy Begg

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