Re: [cobalt-developers] MX problem solved

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Barry Titmarsh wrote:

> As I suspected the problem is contained in the /etc/virtusertable file the
> way its being used with a feature called
> 
> CONFIG: Pass "+detail" as %2 for virtusertable lookups.
>                  Patch from Noam Freedman from University of Chicago.
> 
> CONFIG: Pass "+detail" as %1 for genericstable lookups.  Suggested
>                  by Raymond S Brand of rsbx.net.
> 
> its possible the feature is missing in redhat.mc  the feature is -
> genericstable

Sorry, but it's got nothing to do with genericstable.
Genericstable is for outgoing email, NOT for incoming email.  It changes
the SENDER's address ("sendmail", 2nd Edition, Page 262).

Virtusertable also uses %1, and it's for incoming email.

"A virtusertable is a database that maps virtual (possibly nonexistent)
domains into new addresses. Essentialy, it gives you a database hook
into the early part of rule set 0." ("sendmail", 2nd Edition, Page 262).

I was wrong in my previus post about "%1" being documented in the
"sendmail" book; it's documented at
"http://www.sendmail.org/virtual-hosting.html":

"In this first example, the address joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx will be mapped to
the local user jschmoe, jane@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx will be mapped to the remote
user jdoe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, and anything else coming in to
yourdomain.com will also go to jschmoe.

     joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx      jschmoe
     bogus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx    error:nouser No such user here
     list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx     yourdomain-list
     @yourdomain.com         %1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

In this second example, the address joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx will be mapped to
the local user jschmoe, the address bogus@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx will return the
indicated error, the address list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx will be mapped to the
local user yourdomain-list (which you would use the aliases file to
ultimately resolve) and every other user at yourdomain.com will be
mapped to a remote user of the same name at othercompany.com."

And I do want to put out that the Cobalt gui does it properly for most
of us most of the time.

> thats what the %1@xxxxxxxxxx is doing in the virtusertable file.

Not at all.  Genericstable has nothing to do with incoming email.

> ANYway,
> 
> I got around the problem by not ticking ANY of the boxes that say accept
> email for domain in site-settings on any virtual or main site.
> 
> I then added into the control panel email the domain in the box Host/Domain
> Aliases  as some one pointed out.
> it seem to work so far.

This works as long as mail addressed to "user@xxxxxxxxxx" is going
directly to "user" but it bypasses any extra aliases and forwards, so
it's pretty simplistic.

> but what is colbalt trying to do with this broken GUI ?

> PS Thanks to all who helped debug this problem I have a good idea on the
> fault in the scripts and am working on a fix.

Please don't present your scripts as a fix until and unless you're
willing to address all the functionality Cobalt provides; giving up
aliases and forwards is a pretty high price to pay to fix something
that's really not broken.

Jeff
-- 
Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
nobaloney.net
P. O. Box 52672
Riverside, CA  92517
voice: (909) 787-8589  *  fax: (909) 782-0205