[Dovecot] lda: vacation auto-reply for a virtual address

[Steffen Kaiser]

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On Wed, 8 Aug 2007, martin f krafft wrote:

> As a long-time Debian user, I'd really rather not patch anything. :)

Um, I couldn't stand this policy while waiting for Sarge.

> But yes, if dovecot's LDA would honour something like .forward
> files, I'd be happy.

Actually, the forward files functionality is mail forwarding per user, 
this is you setup two (independed) maildrops per recipient; it's a feature 
of the MTA, not of the MDA.

One maildrop is the mailbox of the local user, the other one is the 
auto-responder.

Maybe, you could also name it "aliasing", you alias the local recipient to 
the local recipient himself and the responder (double the mail, like if 
you would forward the mail to two different remote addresses). In sendmail 
the main difference between ".forward" and aliases is that aliases are 
executed with the permission of the MTA, but .forwards with the 
permissions of the user. I don't know postfix, so I cannot use the correct 
terms of it.

Sendmail uses different mailers (exim calls them transports, if I remember 
correctly) for the two different maildrops, "scripts" are invoked by the 
virtual "*prog*" mailer, whereas the spooling into a local mailbox is 
performed by the "local" mailer, which is bound to e.g. Dovecot deliver.

http://www.postfix.org/local.8.html
"An alias or ~/.forward file may list  any  combination  of
        external   commands,  destination  file  names,  :include:
        directives, or mail addresses.  See aliases(5) for a  pre-
        cise  description. Each line in a user's .forward file has
        the same syntax as the right-hand part of an alias."
this paragraphe should cover what I mean (section: SYSTEM-WIDE AND 
USER-LEVEL ALIASING).

Bye,

- -- 
Steffen Kaiser
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