DOCUMENT ID: 1330-02 SYNOPSIS: Using mail ".forward" in a heterogenous environment OS RELEASE: 2.1, 2.4, 2.5 PRODUCT: Solaris KEYWORDS: mail mailx mailtool forward DESCRIPTION: The use of the forwarding facility within mail systems is not as straight forward as it appears. The term "hetrogenous environment" usually is defined "multivendors hardware and operating systems". The use of multiple versions of an operating system must also be considered heterogenous. The primary use for ".forward" is for vacation or temporary relocation of the addressee. The vacation program is probably the most often specified binary program. Mail sorters like "Personal Postmaster" and "procmail" are also used. The executables for non-operating system supplied programs are usually not available on all systems within a business enterprise. In a homogenous environment the programs may simply be compiled and stored in the user's home directory. Occasionally there are "site" repositories for such programs. The hetrogenius environment requires special care. An example which may not be considered is Solaris X86, and Solaris Sparc both being at 2.4. The executable program specified in the user's ".forward" must be in the executable format of the operating system the "mail" agent is executing. The mail agent inspects the user's home directory for the ".forward" and takes the forwarding actions including invocation of executable objects. A rsh command could be used to allow a foreign binary to be executed. The rsh command must not fail, so be mindful of the special remote host security issues. References: Man pages: vacation(1), aliases(4B), mail(1), mailx(1), sendmail(1M) Comer, Douglas [1993] Internetworking with TCP/IP Vol III, pg 128 DATE APPROVED: 05/08/95