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Hi,
During the next maintenance window (March 7th), we will make some
changes to how mail forwarding works. This will not affect most users,
but you should read this mail anyway, especially if you make use of
.forward files. A summary of the changes you might need to make are at
the end of this mail.
At present, all mail to user(a)toolserver.org is sent to your LDAP alias;
if you don't have an address set in LDAP, mail is sent to nightshade and
processed locally (which might include using .forward files). Locally
generated mail, e.g. cron, is handled by .forward; users with email
addresses set in LDAP have "username(a)toolserver.org" in $HOME/.forward
so it's forwarded properly.
After this change, mail to user(a)toolserver.org and mail to
user(a)ANYMACHINE.toolserver.org will be handled as follows:
* If $HOME/.forward exists, mail will be delivered to the address in
that file;
* If not, mail will be delivered to the user's LDAP email address, if
any if set;
* If none is set, mail will be delivered locally on either clematis or
hawthorn (*not* nightshade).
In addition, mail to user+foo(a)toolserver.org and
user+foo(a)ANYMACHINE.toolserver.org will be accepted, where "foo" can be
any string. This will be handled in the same way, except that
$HOME/.forward+foo will be checked instead of $HOME/.forward. This
allows you to process mail differently depending on the address (see
below for an example).
In summary, you should make these changes after the maintenance:
* If you do not do anything "special" with your mail, and you have an
LDAP mail address set, and your .forward file contains
"username(a)toolserver.org", then you do not need to do anything. We
will delete your .forward file during the maintenance, since it's no
longer necessary. This applies to the vast majority of users.
* If you have an LDAP email address set, and your .forward file contains
a different address, you should delete your .forward file after the
maintenance. We will not do this for you.
* If you do not have an LDAP email address set, and you have a .forward
file containing an email address, you do not have to do anything.
However, you *should* run 'setmail' to set an LDAP email address, then
delete your .forward file.
* If you do not have an LDAP email address set, and you do not have a
.forward file, then currently your mail will be delivered locally on
nightshade. After the maintenance, your mail will be delivered
locally on either hawthorn or clematis. We do not support this
configuration, and you should set an email address in LDAP so your mail
is forwarded. However, if you insist on having mail delivered locally,
you can continue to do so.
* If you currently rely on accepting mail to
user+foo(a)machine.toolserver.org and use .forward+foo to funnel this
mail to a program, then you do not have to do anything. However, you
*should* instead send mail to user+foo(a)toolserver.org, which does not
rely on a particular machine being up. Note that if you do this, the
incoming mail will be processed on either clematis or hawthorn.
The explanation of these changes is more complicated than the actual
changes. The result should be that mail processing is much simpler and
more obvious to users.
- river.
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