Topic: invalid email addresses and admin account

[Jason Arthurs]

I'm using SME Server 5.6

As I understood the manual, mail not addressed to specific users or their pseudonyms or invalid domains is sent to the admin account.

Some of this mail does seem to go directly to the admin account, but the majority seems to make its way to my account. I've checked the headers and despite usually being addressed to non-existent users and invalid domains they still seem to be being redirected to my mail account.

An example header:

Return-Path:
Delivered-To: jason@tenjin.vitae-services.co.uk
Received: (qmail 6089 invoked by alias); 1 Oct 2003 15:09:42 -0000
Delivered-To: alias-localdelivery-jason@vitae-services.co.uk
Received: (qmail 6084 invoked from network); 1 Oct 2003 15:09:39 -0000
Received: from smtp-out4.blueyonder.co.uk (195.188.213.7)
  by tenjin.vitae-services.co.uk (192.168.0.250) with ESMTP; 01 Oct 2003 15:09:39 -0000
Received: from uudvlwnf ([82.34.88.98]) by smtp-out4.blueyonder.co.uk with Microsoft SMTPSVC(5.0.2195.5600);
    Wed, 1 Oct 2003 14:40:19 +0100
FROM: "Email Service"
TO: "Internet Receiver"
SUBJECT: Bug Announcement
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
   boundary="fivdixmm"
Return-Path: dm006g2162@blueyonder.co.uk
Message-ID:
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 01 Oct 2003 13:40:19.0378 (UTC) FILETIME=[8DFA1120:01C38821]
Date: 1 Oct 2003 14:40:19 +0100

Now I'm reading this as a message to 'recipient@mailserver.com' since I don't host 'mailserver.com' or have a user called 'recipient' this *should* go to my admin account. But for some reason my server decided to redirect it to alias-localdelivery-jason@vitae-services.co.uk and dump it into my mailbox.

Anyone shed some light onto why this mail is being forwarded to me rather than the admin account?

Regards,
Jason.

[Dan Brown]

Is the admin account set to forward to you?  My server is set to bounce messages to unknown addresses, and I can't think why anybody would want it set otherwise, but that's a separate issue.  My server is also set to forward admin messages to me, and that setting could cause this.

[Jason Arthurs]

I've just set up the server and I'm still waiting for my MX record changes to propagate out so I'm currently being cautious and I don't want to bounce messages just yet.

In the other email settings page the box 'Forwarding address for administrative notices' is blank which as I understand means they should go to admin. The 'E-mail to unknown users' is set to 'Send to administrator'. But for some reason, whilst some are going to admin, the majority are coming to my mailbox (jason).

Unfortunately most of the rubbish is currently these MS patch worm files.

Help!

Jason.