email forwarding

[Hokey]

I have never used FreeBSD to handle email before, so I am a little lost on exactly what to use.

Here is my situation:
I have 6 domains. Three of them are already set up for email which is being processed with an MS Exchange server. The other three are now in need of email forwarding. I dont need to actually recieve email at these domains, but a mass forwarder. Example:

sales@domain4.com => john@domain1.com
info@domain5.com => russell.james@domain3.com
software@domain6.com => sales@domain1.com
etc...

I could just use my Exchange servers to do this, but I would like to see how to use FreeBSD in such an instance. I was looking at qpopper, but was interested in what you all have to say. What would you use for this task?

Also ... I have a couple of friends that might need to do the same thing that do not have Exchange servers. Would a FBSD box do what they need (forwarding) or is there already some business on the internet that will handle mail forwarding for your personal domains?

Thanks

 

[StarTAC]

u need to run a mailer program such as sendmail on your FreeBSD machine.. u would then have to create local users on that machine who would basically receive e-mail sent to their domain.. users such as john, sales, info, rusell.james etc..... now, in their home directories, u would have to create a .forward file.. please notice the . before forward... as in "a dot forward" file.. to see what i mean, cd into your user's dir and run the cmd ls -a .. this will show the dot files...

in the .forward files, please insert the e-mail address to forwarded to.. for instance.. if u wanted to forward john's e-mail address from john@domain1.com to john@xxx.com, u would create a .forward file in his home dir with this line:

john@xxx.com

this causes procmail, the local MDA, to search for a file called .forward, and if it finds it, reads it and asks sendmail, the MTA, to redirect the e-mail to the address read in the file...

another way to do it is to edit sendmail's alias file...

good luck

 

[axvpaa]

Hi,
what FreeBSD version you're running?
it's easy to do mail forwarding with sendmail/procmail/qpopper combo.
it will help if you post what version of sendmail you're running on the server.
axvpaa

 

[StarTAC]

i have FreeBSD 4, but my mail server is running Linux.. however, sendmail's behaviour on Linux is not so different than that of FreeBSDs..... and u can do this with sendmail versions right from version 8.6 [ and maybe earlier ] up to the current, which should be 8.12

 

[axvpaa]

hi,
i asked for a version so i can provide him with specific information about his sendmail. btw, sendmail is the same for all platforms that supports sendmail afaik.
based on the expirience, i would go with sendmail alias file. easyer to work with and one place to edit stuff.
my $0.02

 

[soccernut]

To axvpaa how exactly do you set up the alias?

 

[axvpaa]

hi,
check this out and let me know

http://www.sendmail.org/virtual-hosting.html

also, try to
#cd /etc/mail
and check virtusertable.sample
alexp.s. if you have alias on the local system only ( not virtual domain) go to /etc/mail and edit aliases
after u're done, start #newaliases, restart sendmail and there you go
hth