[Toolserver-l] Changes to mail forwarding

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 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".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.