Managing mail with MMDF

Routing mail for unrecognized users

Mail addressed to unknown users can be forwarded to a smart host using a special mail channel, the badusers channel. This is useful if you have a large number of people at your site. Instead of maintaining information on all the people at the site on each host, you can maintain this information on one central host (the smart host); each individual host maintains information about the local users only. In this case, any mail addressed to users that the local machine does not recognize is directed to the badusers channel. The mail routed on this channel is sent to the smart host via the channel (such as UUCP) that you usually use to communicate with that host (the channel is selected when you run the MMDF Configuration Manager).

For example, someone on the local host sends mail to melissa but the host does not recognize her as a local user. If you communicate with moose.your_company.com, a smart host that contains complete user information, MMDF routes the message to this host. This does not mean that melissa actually receives her mail on moose, just that moose has more information about where melissa is located.

NOTE: If a user has an account on the local host, but a home account elsewhere, you should define a local alias that will direct the user's mail to the home machine (where the user normally receives mail). If not, the mail will stay on the local machine.

Mail sent to this user is sent via whatever channel the local machine uses to communicate with the home machine, not via the badusers channel.