mail forwarding not working on the starship?

[timehorse at unforgettable.com]

In article <3908538A.E74456A5 at GermanLloyd.org>,
  Berthold Hoellmann <hoel at GermanLloyd.org> wrote:
> Now that my .starship_info is set up to forward my mail, any test mail
> send to my starship account still seems to be lost somwhere without
any
> error message. My starship address is "bhoel at starship.python.net" and
> mail should be forwarded to "se6y095 at public.uni-hamburg.de".
>
> Is anyone out there who can help me?

Hi Berthold,

I have been doing a lot of research on this issue as Andrew installed
an SSH key for me yesterday and now I have access to my A/C [Thanks
again Andrew!  :) ].  Anyway, one thing that everyone on Starship
should know is that we are no longer using SENDMAIL as our transport
agent.  We have been moved to qmail as it is LEAPS AND BOUNDS easier to
maintain.  This is obvious simply from the REAMS of man pages
associated with QMail installed on every possible mail topic from where
to store your mailbox to how to detect, trace and prevent forged mail.
Now, one thing I have observed is that QMail no longer uses the
Sendmail .forward scripts directly, and thus your mail will not be
forwarded using the old method I used to use.  Instead, you have
a .qmail file in your home directory and that can act as your .forward
file.  The format is simple:

#<comment>

for a comment

|<prog>

for a pipe

[&]<address>

for a forwarding address, the Ampersand (&) is only required when the e-
mail address does not start with an alphanumeric character.  The
address must be a valid internet address with a fully-qualified domain
name.

/<path>/<file>
.<path>/<file>

Store the mail in <file> with path <path>.

/<path>/
.<path>/

Use the path specified as the mail storage folder.

Now, if you still want to use your old .forward file from before, you
can do this too.  Basically you put a line in your .qmail file
something like:

|dot-forward [-nN] .forward

-N: Read and forward the message [default]
-n: Parse the file and print out the instructions it contains, usually
used for debugging on the command line.

Again, please read the man page to check the exact syntax.

So, for you Bertold, I would suggest setting up a .qmail file with:

&se6y095 at public.uni-hamburg.de

As its only entry.  That SHOULD in THEORY get things to where they
ought to be.  I can verify that when I send mail on starship to my
starship account, the forwarding works.

HOWEVER, I still can't receive mail from outside the ship!  I have a
friend who told me there was an infinite hop count with one of his
mails, but that was before I set up the .qmail file and all the test
mails I send seem to disappear into oblivion like yours.  It is very
distressing as I have had to deal with the same thing when posting to
the mailing lists I maintain on eGroups using the Web interface.  As it
is, deja.com may be my only way of communicating with people.  :(
Anyway, that you and I are both experiencing the evil mail void, I
don't have any idea what could be wrong.  Originally I though it may be
that the .forwarding was set by a super-user account so I was searching
Starship for occurrences of my official e-mail address in case it may
be
forwarding to the wrong address, but so far I have found naught.  Does
anyone else know more about QMail to explain why e-mail is not being
delivered?  Berthold and I would appreciate any help greatly!  Thanks
and hope my little man-page summary will help others.
Remember: .qmail, NOT .forward.  :)

Be Seeing You,

Jeffrey.


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