.forward files don't work

Hi everyone,

I can’t seem to get the system to look at the .forward file in the user’s home dir. I’ve checked the permissions of the .forward file and it seems fine too.

# pwd
/home/domain1.com/homes/someguy

# ls -lha
total 20K
drwxr-xr-x  4 someguy@domain1.com domain1.com 4.0K Mar 16 09:23 .
drwxr-xr-x  4 domain1.com       domain1.com 4.0K Feb 26 20:57 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 someguy@domain1.com domain1.com   21 Mar 16 09:23 .forward

# cat .forward
someotherguy@domain2.com

When a message comes in to someguy@domain1.com, rather than the system reading the .forward file and forwarding it over to someotherguy@domain2.com, the system just puts it in the mailbox for someguy@domain1.com as though the .forward file wasn’t there.

The maillog isn’t particularly helpful:

# grep l2GGNf6t011416 /var/log/maillog
Mar 16 09:23:45 devel sendmail[[11416]]: l2GGNf6t011416: from=someperson@domain1.com>, size=388, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=45FAC486.40208@domain1.com>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MSA, relay=S010600090f409322.vs.shawcable.net [[xx.xxx.xx.xxx]]
Mar 16 09:23:56 devel MailScanner[[23006]]: Logging message l2GGNf6t011416 to SQL
Mar 16 09:23:56 devel MailScanner[[8197]]: l2GGNf6t011416: Logged to MailWatch SQL
Mar 16 09:23:56 devel sendmail[[11464]]: l2GGNf6t011416: to=someguy@domain1.com>, delay=00:00:11, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local, pri=120388, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent

(** note the ‘<’ signs have been removed from the log excerpt to comply with the Virtualmin forum software)

I’m not sure how to troubleshoot this issue.

I’m running Virtualmin, Usermin, Sendmail, etc. on Centos 4.4.

Thanks,
Chris

Hey Chris,

What delivery agent are you using? That’s who decides whether to pay attention to .forward files. I don’t see a call to procmail in the maillog there…but Sendmail may not mention specifically that it’s sending to procmail. I’m not familiar enough with sendmail log entries to know.

.forward files MUST be chmod 600 for sendmail/postfix to use it. What the file is set at now is 644 which is a security issue.