This section provides information to help you configure your
e-mail server. You can configure autoreplies, aliases, mailing lists, virtmaps,
catchalls for “general delivery” mail, and access control (blocking unsolicited
e-mail or spam).
Access Control
The proliferation of spam is an increasing annoyance to
everyone. The VPS v2 Virtual Server provides two ways to control spammer access:
Maintaining the Access File
When choosing values to place in the /etc/mail/access
file, you should understand the layout and contents of the mail message headers
in an unsolicited message. Mail message layouts (as read by your VPS v2 Virtual Server) enable
you to locate and recognize the message's SMTP envelope sender.
Header Lines “From” and “From:”
Your VPS v2 Virtual Server places the sender address in the header line
that begins with "From " (the word "From" followed by one
space character).
Notice the differences between "From" and
"From:" Header lines are not required to be the same, although they
often are. The "From:" header line is part of the message content,
not part of the SMTP envelope. If a discrepancy exists between the
"From" address and the "From:" address, use the
"From" address as your value for inclusion in the /etc/mail/access file.
Envelope sender blocking is not foolproof. Because the
envelope sender can be (and often is) falsified by spam purveyors, the blocking
can be circumvented. Most messages are deflected; however, you must diligently
maintain the /etc/mail/access file.
Autoreplies
An autoreply program automatically sends a predetermined
reply to e-mail received at a specific address. It can be used to automatically
reply to requests for product lists, FAQs and other common documents. It is
also useful for sending an automatic confirmation that e-mail has been
received.
An autoreply program will respond to every incoming
message to the e-mail addresses designated in the aliases file. If you expect
to receive a significant number of e-mails from individual users, but don't
wish to send an autoreply to every e-mail, you might want to use the vacation
program that is shipped with Sendmail. It limits the number of replies to a
given sender, so that a reply is sent only once per week (or another
configurable period of time).
Your server uses the Autoreply program by default. If you
prefer to use the Reply-O-Matic (rom) autoreply program, consult the rom man
page and replace /usr/local/bin with /usr/local/sbin/rom
with the appropriate flags.
Creating Autoreply Addresses
Use the following as an example when creating your own autoreply.
info: joeuser, "|/usr/local/bin/autoreply -f
\"autobot@mydomain.com\" -m /home/joeuser/info.reply -a
\"info@mydomain.com\""
