.forward file help needed

[Sunny79]

Hi everyone, I am currently running Sendmail 8.12 on a SUN system. Our company was just bought so we are going to me making a move from the POP server to an Exchange server for emails. I wanted to place a .forward file on the SUN system to forward emails going to the old addresses. When I read the facts on .forward all it says is that I am supposed to enter a command, (echo 'user@newdomain.com' > .forward), which will make sure that all of that particular user's emails are forwarded from the POP server to the Exchange.

This leads to two questions when I was testing this out.

1. Everytime I enter the echo command for the user, there is a .forward file created on the root dir for only one user, because if I enter the same command again for a different user, the .forward file overwrites the old account I enter. How is this going to work for multiple user accounts. I have 25 that need forwarding.

2. What is the procedure for using the .forward file. If I am able to enter multiple accounts in the .forward file, how will sendmail recognize which email goes to whom. ie..

If we have a user ID in the POP server bobj and need it going to the Exchange account for the same person, but with a different userid bobjoe, then how will just placing a bobjoe@newdomain.com let sendmail know that all the emails for bobj@olddomain.com go to the new bobjoe@newdomain.com.

Currently I understand that the .forward file looks like:

bobjoe@newdomain.com
henryk@newdomain.com

 

[jad]

grep '/bin/c*sh' /etc/passwd | nawk -F":" '{per=sprintf("echo %s@newdomain.com > /home/%s/.forward",$1,$1); system(per);}'

maybe

you might want to change 'system' to 'print' to test it first

 

[asanchez4]

It was my understanding that each user gets a .forward file placed in their ~/home/<user> directory -- that is how sendmail knows where to route the mail for each user.

 

[Sunny79]

Thank you asanchez4 and jad, since the last time I posted this question someone had suggested the use of a .forward file. And you are right about the .forward file placed in the /home/<user> directory.
All I had to do was to go to each individual user's home directory and create a .forward file, in which I added just the new email address I wanted the emails to be forwarded to. It worked like a charm.

Thank you for your all your help.