SUMMARY: From field on systems mounting /var/spool/mail

From: Gary Richardson (gpr@proteon.com)
Date: Tue Jan 05 1993 - 16:04:46 CST


I'm tellin' ya, this mail list is great. I got tons of responses,
and I got the answer I was looking for. Here's my original posting:

>
>
> Hi all,
>
> Our environment has one central /var/spool/mail on a server that
> gets mounted via a direct map. This is what we want and are happy
> with it. But whereas I'm aliased to root on the server (hostname=fats)
> any mail that is generated to root on ANY machine in the building
> ends up coming to me.
>
> Now that in itself is STILL ok. The problem is that it ALL comes to
> me FROM "root@fats.proteon.com". This becomes quite a problem when
> error emails are sent like the one below:
>
> > From root@fats.proteon.com Wed Dec 30 03:59:34 1992
> > Return-Path: <root@fats.proteon.com>
> > Date: Wed, 30 Dec 92 03:59:42 EST
> > From: root@fats.proteon.com (Operator)
> > To: root@fats.proteon.com
> > Subject: Output from "cron" command
> > Content-Length: 137
> > X-Lines: 8
> >
> > Your "cron" job
> >
> > su root </usr/lib/newsyslog
> >
> > produced the following output:
> >
> > LOG=messages: Command not found.
> > LOG: Undefined variable.
> >
>
> (BTW, I'm not worried about the specific error, I just can't find the
> machine it's coming from!! ;-)
>
>
> The problem for me is that this message wasn't generated on the
> machine "fats". It's occuring on one of the MANY clients in the
> building. Since I have close to 70-75 machines out there, I haven't
> a clue as to which machine generated this mail message.
>
> Now for my question. Can I alter/enhance the sendmail.cf on the
> clients I have in the building to tell me which machine this REALLY
> came from, and not say it's coming from the machine which /var/spool/mail
> physically lives on? So instead of saying it came from
> "root@fats.proteon.com", I want it to have to REAL hostname in there
> (i.e. "root@roadmap.proteon.com").
>
> (and in case anyone is wondering, my machine is NOT mounting
> /var/spool/mail, thus that's why you might see my actual hostname
> in the from field).
>
> I'd greatly appreciate any help anyone can give, and I shall summarize.
>
> -Gary

Below are the suggestions I recieved:

1) Select View->Messages->Full if you're in Sun's mailtool to see
   the full headers of mail messages

2) Put the hostname in the "name" field for root's /etc/passwd entry
   on all the machines

3) Take the "OR" entry out of all the sendmail.cf files on the clients

4) Remove "Recieved" from the ignore statement in the .mailrc

The answer I was really looking for was #3. I tried it and it worked
just as I hoped! All the other suggestions would also work, but #3
is what I really wanted.

My sincere thanks to the following people who responded to me:

mgh@bihobl2.bih.harvard.edu (Michael G. Harrington)
jpd@discovery.cl.msu.edu
don@mars (Donald McLachlan)
pln@egret1.Stanford.EDU (Patrick L. Nolan)
danny@ews7.dseg.ti.com
David Wiseman <magi@uuserve.on.ca>
rickert@cs.niu.edu
jack@laguna.ccsf.caltech.edu
drl@vuse.vanderbilt.edu
Perry_Hutchison.Portland@xerox.com
mblisd!isd17!lister@sunaus.Aus.Sun.COM (Andrew Lister)
ems@ccrl.nj.nec.com
katzung@lisle.swissbank.com (Brian Katzung)
dennett@Kodak.COM (Charles R. Dennett)
Mike Raffety <miker@il.us.swissbank.com>
Eckhard.Rueggeberg@ts.go.dlr.de
klamer@mi.eltn.utwente.nl (Klamer Schutte)
macphed@dvinci.usask.ca (Ian MacPhedran)
jpm@geoquest.com (Jeffrey P. Manjerovic)
infotec!jhart3@sunkist.West.Sun.COM (Jeff Hart)
justice@dao.nrc.ca (Gerald Justice)

Thanks to all!!

-Gary

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   / / / / / / / / / / /| / WHO: Gary Richardson
  /___/ /__/ / / / /--- / / / | / HOW: gpr@proteon.com
 / / | /___/ / /____ /___/ / |/ INC. WHAT: Unix Systems Admin
_________________________________________ WHY: Why not??
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