THE VIRTUAL SERVER HANDBOOK

Aliasing E mail accounts

Using the Virtual Server E mail system, you can create E mail aliases, or

forwarding addresses. An E mail alias takes a piece of incoming mail and

immediately resends it to one or more recipients. You can point many

aliases to a single recipient or point a single alias to many recipients.

Aliases are used to create handy replacements for difficult to remember or

long addresses. Aliases can also be used to establish a set of generic

addresses such as "webmaster@yourdomain.com" or

info@yourdomain.com.

 Establishing a set of aliases like the following,

promotes an image of professionalism (even if each alias points to the same

recipient):

sales@yourdomain.com

service@yourdomain.com

jobs@yourdomain.com

Since a single alias can point to multiple recipients, aliases can be used to

create simple mailing lists or announcement boards that point to appropriate

sets of individuals, allowing the alias address to be used as a "broadcast"

address for the group:

everyone@yourdomain.com

marketing@yourdomain.com

engineering@yourdomain.com

If you have a large alias file, add comments to avoid confusion. Any lines

that begins with the # character are considered a comment, and are ignored.

Creating aliases involves just two easy steps:

1.

Edit the ~/etc/aliases files and add the alias.

2.

Run 

vnewaliases

 from a command prompt to generate the

aliases.db

To create an alias for a local user

1.

Edit the ~/etc/aliases file and add the following line:

alias: recipient

Note:  "alias" is replaced with the alias name and "recipient" is replaced

with a simple username.

For example:

webmaster: ted

2.

From the command prompt enter 

vnewaliases

. This action

generates the ~/etc/aliases.db file to activate the alias.

To create an alias for an off site recipient

1.

Edit the ~/etc/aliases file, enter

alias: recipient

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