[plug] Why doesn't my .forward file work ?

[Mike Holland]

On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Bradley Browne wrote:

> can put it in my ~ directory and the mail will sit in my ~
> mailbox and also get forwarded to another account.  It appears

No, you'll need to add your username with a backslash.
quoting from SunOS man pages:

   Automatic Forwarding
       When an alias (or address) is resolved to the  name  of  a
       user  on  the  local  host, sendmail checks for a .forward
       file, owned by the intended recipient, in that user's home
       directory,  and with universal read access.  This file can
       contain one or more  addresses  or  aliases  as  described
       above, each of which is sent a copy of the user's mail.

       Care  must  be taken to avoid creating addressing loops in
       the .forward file.  When forwarding mail between machines,
       be  sure  that the destination machine does not return the
       mail to the  sender  through  the  operation  of  any  NIS
       aliases.   Otherwise,  copies of the message may "bounce".
       Usually, the solution is to change the NIS alias to direct
       mail to the proper destination.

       A  backslash  before a username inhibits further aliasing.
       For instance, to invoke the vacation(1) program,  user  js
       creates a .forward file that contains the line:

              \js, "|/usr/ucb/vacation js"

       so  that  one copy of the message is sent to the user, and
       another is piped into the vacation(1) program.


Mike Holland  <mike at golden.wattle.id.au>
                          --==--