[KLUG Members] Slackware, sendmail aliases, and names like 'user.name'

[Adam Bultman]

Hello everyone.  

I've been noticing a few anomolies with my mail server.   My old server, 
turbolinux 4, had the ability to have usernames like 'user.name'.  My new 
server, slackware, doesn't like the 'user.name' convention, but it'll let 
you log in, receive mail.  I'm fine with slack not liking the convention, 
but what is really peculiar is this:

If you have a username, and entries in virtusertable for it, it'll receive 
mail. However, if you make an alias (/etc/mail/aliases) any user with a 
username like 'user.name' will not receive that email. All of my 'new' 
style usernames 'uname', or 'nameu' will work fine.

Well, you say, 'you should just put aliases to the dot addresses in 
virtusertable to the non dot ones. It's ugly, but it might work'. It 
doesn't.  If I make this in virtusertable:

username@domain.com	user.name@domain.com

And then toss in, say, this:

generic:  usernam@domain.com, otheruser@domain.com

otheruser (assuming he/she is a NON dot-user name person) will get it, but 
username will not.

This is slack 8.1, and I'm getting a touch frustrated. As far as I can 
tell, everything else is running like a swiss watch.


-- 
adamb@glaven.org
[ www.glaven.org ]