Setting Up the Postmaster Alias

Every system should be able to send mail to a postmaster mailbox. You can create a NIS or NIS+ alias for postmaster or create one in each local /etc/mail/aliases file. Here is the default /etc/mail/aliases entry:

# Following alias is required by the mail protocol, RFC 822
# Set it to the address of a HUMAN who deals with this system's
# mail problems.
Postmaster: root

To create the postmaster alias, edit each system's /etc/mail/aliases file and change root to the mail address of the person who acts as postmaster.

You might want to create a separate mailbox for the postmaster to keep postmaster mail separate from personal mail. If you create a separate mailbox, use the mailbox address instead of the postmaster's mail address when you edit the /etc/mail/aliases files.

How to Create a Separate Mailbox for postmaster

1. Create a user account for the person designated as postmaster and put an asterisk (*) in the password field.

2. After mail has been delivered, type mail -f postmaster and press Return.

   The mail program will be able to read and write to the mailbox name.

How to Add the postmaster Mailbox to the Aliases

1. Become root and edit the /etc/mail/aliases file on each system.

   If your network does not run NIS or NIS+, edit the /etc/mail/aliases file.

2. Change the postmaster alias from root to Postmaster: postmastermailbox@postmasterhost and save the changes.

3. On the postmaster's local system create an entry in the /etc/mail/aliases file that defines the name of the alias (sysadmin, for example) and includes the path to the local mailbox.

4. Type newaliases and press Return.

   Or you could change the Postmaster: entry in the aliases file to a Postmaster: /usr/somewhere/somefile entry.