Problems with .forward.

This isn't strictly a Linux question, but nobody on comp.unix.questions
seemed able to help, so I hope to reach a larger audience.

I'm deluged by spam on my shell account on a Sun. In two hours I can get
more than 5 megs of the crap, my mailbox fills up, and whatever more I get
is bounced, including sometimes mail I want to read. The system has
slocal which can filter spam if I put it path in my .forward file, but
..forward doesn't even seem to work. I've even tried putting an alternate
e-mail address in it, but nothing gets forwarded over.

Is there possibly anything I have to do to activate a .forward file, or
any reason it wouldn't work?


--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

(E-Mail Removed) (Gregory L. Hansen) writes:

> This isn't strictly a Linux question, but nobody on comp.unix.questions
> seemed able to help, so I hope to reach a larger audience.
>
> I'm deluged by spam on my shell account on a Sun. In two hours I can get
> more than 5 megs of the crap, my mailbox fills up, and whatever more I get
> is bounced, including sometimes mail I want to read. The system has
> slocal which can filter spam if I put it path in my .forward file, but
> .forward doesn't even seem to work. I've even tried putting an alternate
> e-mail address in it, but nothing gets forwarded over.
>
> Is there possibly anything I have to do to activate a .forward file, or
> any reason it wouldn't work?

Check with the sysadmin to see if the mailer honors .forward.
--
Joseph J. Pfeiffer, Jr., Ph.D. Phone -- (505) 646-1605
Department of Computer Science FAX -- (505) 646-1002
New Mexico State University http://www.cs.nmsu.edu/~pfeiffer
Southwestern NM Regional Science and Engr Fair: http://www.nmsu.edu/~scifair

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
Joe Pfeiffer <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>(E-Mail Removed) (Gregory L. Hansen) writes:
>
>> This isn't strictly a Linux question, but nobody on comp.unix.questions
>> seemed able to help, so I hope to reach a larger audience.
>>
>> I'm deluged by spam on my shell account on a Sun. In two hours I can get
>> more than 5 megs of the crap, my mailbox fills up, and whatever more I get
>> is bounced, including sometimes mail I want to read. The system has
>> slocal which can filter spam if I put it path in my .forward file, but
>> .forward doesn't even seem to work. I've even tried putting an alternate
>> e-mail address in it, but nothing gets forwarded over.
>>
>> Is there possibly anything I have to do to activate a .forward file, or
>> any reason it wouldn't work?
>
>Check with the sysadmin to see if the mailer honors .forward.

It's taken them about two weeks so far to give me a non-answer. I'm
starting to think they won't be much help.


--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

[SNIP]
>>>I'm deluged by spam on my shell account on a Sun. In two hours I can get
>>>more than 5 megs of the crap, my mailbox fills up, and whatever more I get
>>>is bounced, including sometimes mail I want to read. The system has
>>>slocal which can filter spam if I put it path in my .forward file, but
>>>.forward doesn't even seem to work. I've even tried putting an alternate
>>>e-mail address in it, but nothing gets forwarded over.
>>>
>>>Is there possibly anything I have to do to activate a .forward file, or
>>>any reason it wouldn't work?
>>

What are the exact contents of your .forward? Also, what permissions do
you have on your .forward file. Sendmail will often refuse to read a
..forward if your home directory or .forward file don't have the correct
permissions.

In article <K8Ujb.1097$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Michael <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>[SNIP]
>>>>I'm deluged by spam on my shell account on a Sun. In two hours I can get
>>>>more than 5 megs of the crap, my mailbox fills up, and whatever more I get
>>>>is bounced, including sometimes mail I want to read. The system has
>>>>slocal which can filter spam if I put it path in my .forward file, but
>>>>.forward doesn't even seem to work. I've even tried putting an alternate
>>>>e-mail address in it, but nothing gets forwarded over.
>>>>
>>>>Is there possibly anything I have to do to activate a .forward file, or
>>>>any reason it wouldn't work?
>>>
>
>What are the exact contents of your .forward? Also, what permissions do
>you have on your .forward file. Sendmail will often refuse to read a
>.forward if your home directory or .forward file don't have the correct
>permissions.
>


I can't remember off-hand which means what, but the permissions are
-rw-rw---- and contents currently are

steel07$ cat .forward
(E-Mail Removed)
"~/glhansen/spankyfile"
"| /usr/local/nmh/lib/slocal -verbose -user glhansen"

But the contents have changed a few times as I was experimenting with it.
--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

In article <K8Ujb.1097$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Michael <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>[SNIP]
>>>>I'm deluged by spam on my shell account on a Sun. In two hours I can get
>>>>more than 5 megs of the crap, my mailbox fills up, and whatever more I get
>>>>is bounced, including sometimes mail I want to read. The system has
>>>>slocal which can filter spam if I put it path in my .forward file, but
>>>>.forward doesn't even seem to work. I've even tried putting an alternate
>>>>e-mail address in it, but nothing gets forwarded over.
>>>>
>>>>Is there possibly anything I have to do to activate a .forward file, or
>>>>any reason it wouldn't work?
>>>
>
>What are the exact contents of your .forward? Also, what permissions do
>you have on your .forward file. Sendmail will often refuse to read a
>.forward if your home directory or .forward file don't have the correct
>permissions.
>

The permissions on my home direction are drwx--x--x, but in finding that
I've found three directories attached to my name, /N/fs17/glhansen/Steel,
my home, and also /N/fs17/glhansen/Ezinfo and /N/fs17/glhansen/WWW@. I
wonder if my .forward is just in the wrong directory.

--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

Gregory L. Hansen wrote:
> I can't remember off-hand which means what, but the permissions are

On a linux box or solaris box with man pages installed, try man fchmod.

> -rw-rw---- and contents currently are
>
> steel07$ cat .forward
> (E-Mail Removed)
> "~/glhansen/spankyfile"
> "| /usr/local/nmh/lib/slocal -verbose -user glhansen"
>
> But the contents have changed a few times as I was experimenting with it.

Try this link: http://www.sendmail.org/tips/DontBlameSendmail.html

You'll see that sendmail will ignore .forward files with group writable
permissions. Unless you really want other people in your user group to
have write access to .forward, you should probably remove the group
write access. hint: chmod g-w .forward.

If this is a general purpose shell box, you should probably have very
restrictive permissions on both your home directory and your files.
Make sure your umask value is set to a restricted level also.

In article <gTXjb.1167$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Michael <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Gregory L. Hansen wrote:
>> I can't remember off-hand which means what, but the permissions are
>
>On a linux box or solaris box with man pages installed, try man fchmod.
>
>> -rw-rw---- and contents currently are
>>
>> steel07$ cat .forward
>> (E-Mail Removed)
>> "~/glhansen/spankyfile"
>> "| /usr/local/nmh/lib/slocal -verbose -user glhansen"
>>
>> But the contents have changed a few times as I was experimenting with it.
>
>Try this link: http://www.sendmail.org/tips/DontBlameSendmail.html
>
>You'll see that sendmail will ignore .forward files with group writable
>permissions. Unless you really want other people in your user group to
>have write access to .forward, you should probably remove the group
>write access. hint: chmod g-w .forward.

That's kind of disturbing. I hadn't noticed it before, but all the files
I create seem by default to be -rw-rw-----. I've changed it and I'm
bouncing messages to my IUCF account now, and can save messages in a file
now. But slocal still doesn't seem to destroy test messages.

--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé

Gregory L. Hansen wrote:
>>>steel07$ cat .forward
>>>(E-Mail Removed)
>>>"~/glhansen/spankyfile"
>>>"| /usr/local/nmh/lib/slocal -verbose -user glhansen"
>>>
> That's kind of disturbing. I hadn't noticed it before, but all the files
> I create seem by default to be -rw-rw-----. I've changed it and I'm
> bouncing messages to my IUCF account now, and can save messages in a file
> now. But slocal still doesn't seem to destroy test messages.
>

I am not familiar with slocal, but based on
http://www.busan.edu/~nic/networking...il/ch25_07.htm
it looks like you are calling it correctly. What do you mean by
"destroy test messages?" I assume you mean killing the incoming spam?

If you want rule based mail filtering, I'd suggest procmail, if
available on your system. Otherwise, you'll have to try to figure out
why the spam isn't matching the rules that you configured for slocal.
Again, I am not familiar with slocal, but you might want to see if there
is a way to tell it to send unwanted mail to /dev/null, just a thought.

In article <%SYjb.1182$(E-Mail Removed)>,
Michael <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>Gregory L. Hansen wrote:
>>>>steel07$ cat .forward
>>>>(E-Mail Removed)
>>>>"~/glhansen/spankyfile"
>>>>"| /usr/local/nmh/lib/slocal -verbose -user glhansen"
>>>>
>> That's kind of disturbing. I hadn't noticed it before, but all the files
>> I create seem by default to be -rw-rw-----. I've changed it and I'm
>> bouncing messages to my IUCF account now, and can save messages in a file
>> now. But slocal still doesn't seem to destroy test messages.
>>
>
>I am not familiar with slocal, but based on
> http://www.busan.edu/~nic/networking...il/ch25_07.htm
>it looks like you are calling it correctly. What do you mean by
>"destroy test messages?" I assume you mean killing the incoming spam?

I've set my .maildelivery file to destroy messages with the subject
"spanky", and I've sent myself some spanky test messages which faithfully
show up in my inbox.

>
> If you want rule based mail filtering, I'd suggest procmail, if
>available on your system. Otherwise, you'll have to try to figure out

This particular system has slocal, not procmail.

>why the spam isn't matching the rules that you configured for slocal.
>Again, I am not familiar with slocal, but you might want to see if there
>is a way to tell it to send unwanted mail to /dev/null, just a thought.

Actually, I might be happy enough just to be able to pipe it to a script.
If I could kill all messages with a 109 KB attachment that will eliminate
hundreds per day (conservative estimate since I don't count the ones that
bounce from a full inbox), and slocal can't filter on attachment sizes.
It would be interesting to keep stats. But I can't seem to pipe it
anywhere. At least, it doesn't pipe to stdout. But I can save into
files now, so I assume .forward is doing things right and I'm not.

--
"Let us learn to dream, gentlemen, then perhaps we shall find the
truth... But let us beware of publishing our dreams before they have been
put to the proof by the waking understanding." -- Friedrich August Kekulé