9.1.2.2 The $V Metacharacter

Metacharacter expansion occurs prior to URL lookup. The two metacharacters used in the ALIAS_URL0 value are $V and $R.

The $V metacharacter converts the domain part of the address into a base DN. This is similar to the initial steps performed by the $V rewrite rule metacharacter described previously in the section entitled 9.1.1.1 Rewrite Rule Machinery. $V processing consists of the following steps:

1. Get the base DN for user entries in the current domain.

2. Get the canonical domain associated with the current domain. In Sun LDAP Schema 1, the canonical domain name is given by the inetCanonicalDomainName attribute of the domain entry if the attribute is present. If the attribute is absent the canonical name is the name constructed in the obvious way from the DN of the actual domain entry. This will differ from the current domain when the current domain is an alias. The name attribute used to store the canonical name may be overridden with the LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_CANONICAL MTA option in the option.dat file.

   In Sun LDAP Schema 2, the canonical name is simply the value of the SunPreferredDomain attribute.

   A utility for verifying canonical domain settings for domains with overlapping user entries is provided. See imsimta test -domain in Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.3 Administration Reference.

3. If the base DN exists, substitute it into the URL in place of the $V.

4. Any applicable hosted domain for this entry is now determined. This is done by comparing either the canonical domain (if bit 2 (value = 4) of DOMAIN_UPLEVEL is clear) or the current domain (if bit 2 (value = 4) of DOMAIN_UPLEVEL is set) with the service.defaultdomain configutil parameter. If they do not match, the entry is a member of a hosted domain. The service.defaultdomain configutil parameter can be overridden by setting the LDAP_DEFAULT_DOMAIN MTA option in the option.dat file.

5. If the base DN determination fails, remove a component from the left hand side of the domain and go to Step 1. The substitution fails if no components remain.

$V also accepts an optional numeric argument. If it is set to 1 (for example, $1V), a failure to resolve the domain in the domain tree will be ignored and the base of the user tree specified by the local.ugldapbasedn configutil option will be returned.

If the attempt to retrieve the domain's base DN succeeds, the MTA also retrieves several useful domain attributes which will be needed later. The names of the attributes retrieved are set by the following MTA options in the option.dat file:

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_UID_SEPARATOR (default domainUidSeparator)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_SMARTHOST (default mailRoutingSmartHost)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_CATCHALL_ADDRESS (default mailDomainCatchallAddress)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_CATCHALL_MAPPING (no default value)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_BLOCKLIMIT (default mailDomainMsgMaxBlocks)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_REPORT_ADDRESS (default mailDomainReportAddress)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_STATUS (default inetDomainStatus)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_MAIL_STATUS (default mailDomainStatus)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_CONVERSION_TAG (default mailDomainConversionTag)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_FILTER (default mailDomainSieveRuleSource)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_DISK_QUOTA (no default)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_MESSAGE_QUOTA (no default)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_AUTOREPLY_TIMEOUT (no default)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_NOSOLICIT (no default)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_OPTIN (no default)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_RECIPIENTLIMIT (no default)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_RECIPIENTCUTOFF (no default)

• LDAP_DOMAIN_ATTR_SOURCEBLOCKLIMIT (no default)