Re: [cobalt-users] Maillog error

["Steven Werby" <steven-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dan Izydorek <dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> because one of the domains on my server that I just setup has some aliases
> for emailbox's and the aliases don't work.  I setup a test on and made the
> username dan4 and then an aliases of dan.  When I send to
> dan4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx I receive it, but when I send to
> dan@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx it goes to another domain where the username is
> dan what is going on?

Does the same thing on my boxes.  If an email alias for site1 is also the username
for site2 (as in the alias is "dan" and the username is "dan", email addressed to
dan@site1 will be delivered to dan@site.  Sure, it's a problem, unless that's the
behavior you want (there are cases where you would), but it's easy to fix.

The solution is to separate usernames and email aliases by using coded usernames.
This has the added benefit of making it harder for hackers to guess usernames to
login to email, ftp, telnet or ssh.  Use whatever naming convention you like -
generate usernames randomly or using a logical scheme.  I have usernames like
"d016012" where "a" represents the server that the user is on, "016" represents the
site number the user belongs to and "012" represents the 12th user on that site.
Users never complain b/c I always explain that it is done for security purposes.  I
generally don't allow customer access to the GUI so I can get away with this.

So, when would you want the email behavior that you currently consider a problem?
Well, if you want to setup all domains so that abuse@anydomain and
postmaster@anydomain are routed to the server administrator it would be easy to set
up users named "abuse" and "postmaster" and accomplish that.  The alternative would
be to 1. setup catch-all email addresses on all sites or 2. created two aliases
("abuse" and "postmaster") on all sites.

Steven Werby {steven-lists@xxxxxxxxxxxx}