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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@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@toolserver.org" in $HOME/.forward so it's forwarded properly.
After this change, mail to user@toolserver.org and mail to user@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@toolserver.org and user+foo@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@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@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@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.
River Tarnell river.tarnell@wikimedia.de wrote:
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@toolserver.org is sent to your LDAP alias; if you don't have an address set in LDAP, mail is sent to nightshade and
- 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.
I use toolserver email only for short-lived reports from cron or other jobs and nothing that I need to store longer or have a record of communications.
I am currently having "MYPRIMARYEMAILADDRESSOUTSIDE,\saper" in my $HOME/.forward which gives me a nice capability to use mail(1) or mailx(1) to quickly read whatever my jobs running on the localhost do. I do not mind *not* having this replicated accross the cluster, so a process running on willow sends mail to willow etc.
I do not have any LDAP entry related to mail (and it's fine, too).
Will local delivery on the Solaris boxes still possible?
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.
I understand that all hosts will start processing LDAP entries first, and forwarding the rest to the two hosts you named. However, currently local mail on clematis/hawthorn isn't replicated (i.e. when I delete a mailbox on one of them, everything stays there on the other, so I have to delete on both).
From the point of redundancy, I'd rather have local mail delivered where
it originated, since that host is most possibly up. I personally don't care much about mail originated externally (preferably I'd like to have one local mailbox to clean up).
SGE is smart enough to send email to the local account on the host where job started, which is very good to me, but seems not work on willow for some reason (filed https://jira.toolserver.org/browse/TS-955 with details).
Will local, per-host mail (from mail(1) or SGE) be preserved?
//Marcin
In article slrnimifal.fte.saper@saper.info, Marcin Cieslak saper@saper.info wrote:
I am currently having "MYPRIMARYEMAILADDRESSOUTSIDE,\saper" in my $HOME/.forward which gives me a nice capability to use mail(1) or mailx(1) to quickly read whatever my jobs running on the localhost do. I do not mind *not* having this replicated accross the cluster, so a process running on willow sends mail to willow etc.
I do not have any LDAP entry related to mail (and it's fine, too).
Will local delivery on the Solaris boxes still possible?
Yes, this will still work. However, since you have a .forward file, your LDAP email address will be entirely ignored. This means that email to saper@toolserver.org will be delivered to your local account on hawthorn or clematis as well as being forwarded to your forwarding address.
If you have no email address set in LDAP, then nothing will change from how it works at the moment, except that incoming mail from outside the Toolserver will arrive on clematis/hawthorn instead of on nightshade.
I understand that all hosts will start processing LDAP entries first, and forwarding the rest to the two hosts you named.
Not exactly. clematis and hawthorn will only handle incoming SMTP, i.e. mail to user@toolserver.org...
From the point of redundancy, I'd rather have local mail delivered where it originated, since that host is most possibly up. I personally don't care much about mail originated externally (preferably I'd like to have one local mailbox to clean up).
... which mean that if you send mail from a Toolserver system, it will be delivered by that system, whether it's delivered locally or forwarded elsewhere. This includes mail from SGE and from cron, and it applies even if you send mail to an @toolserver.org address. hawthorn/clematis are only special because they will be listed as the mail exchangers for toolserver.org.
Will local, per-host mail (from mail(1) or SGE) be preserved?
Yes, as above.
- river.
Thank you for your explanations. I think I understand now clearly this change.
River Tarnell r.tarnell@IEEE.ORG wrote:
... which mean that if you send mail from a Toolserver system, it will be delivered by that system, whether it's delivered locally or forwarded elsewhere. This includes mail from SGE and from cron, and it applies even if you send mail to an @toolserver.org address.
I just tried emailing saper@toolserver.org from both willow and nightshade, as well as externally. My external account gets the mail (all three emails) but none of the local accounts does (neither nightshade, willow, hawthorn, clematis, wolfsbane or ortelius). Is this because of my $HOME/.forward?
Local emailing works (except for the TS-955).
//Marcin
In article slrnimil5m.fte.saper@saper.info, Marcin Cieslak saper@saper.info wrote:
I just tried emailing saper@toolserver.org from both willow and nightshade, as well as externally. My external account gets the mail (all three emails) but none of the local accounts does (neither nightshade, willow, hawthorn, clematis, wolfsbane or ortelius). Is this because of my $HOME/.forward?
Under the current configuration, mail to user@toolserver.org will never be sent to a local mailbox if you have an LDAP email address set. This applies regardless of where the mail originates.
- river.
Under the current configuration, mail to user@toolserver.org will never be sent to a local mailbox if you have an LDAP email address set. This applies regardless of where the mail originates. (...)
Regarding this [old] subject, and saying hello to everyone in my first mail here, it seems that $HOME/.forward (containing $HOME@toolserver.org) should be no longer created for new accounts. After testing in my few-days-old account, external mail sent to jem@toolserver.org was going apparently to nowhere, until I deleted .forward and then began to arrive to my LDAP address, as expected...
If my impression is right, would it be necessary to file a JIRA bug for this?
** José Emilio Mori Recio - http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:-jem- ** * Administrador Informático del Arzobispado de Valladolid * ** Bibliotecario de Wikipedia en español - Promotor de Wikimedia España **
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José Emilio Mori Recio:
Regarding this [old] subject, and saying hello to everyone in my first mail here, it seems that $HOME/.forward (containing $HOME@toolserver.org) should be no longer created for new accounts. After testing in my few-days-old account, external mail sent to jem@toolserver.org was going apparently to nowhere, until I deleted .forward and then began to arrive to my LDAP address, as expected...
You're right, this file should not be created any more, and doing so will cause mail to be lost (actually, bounced, I hope). I've fixed mkuser to no longer create it and removed the bad file from recently created accounts.
Thanks for reporting this -- no need to file an issue in JIRA.
- river.
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