Unroutable address root@localhost

[etienne]

What is the nicest way to make exim 4.50 to route these messages into a maibox assigned for root in /etc/alias file?

2005-03-06 22:49:14 1D82ga-00067Q-Qg <= root@localhost H=localhost (garfield.tee-en.net) [127.0.0.1] P=smtp S=810
2005-03-06 22:49:14 1D82ga-00067Q-Qg ** root@localhost: Unrouteable address

The messages are sent by some local service with tcp/ip to root@localhost, obviously with no from information.

I guess my acl already accepts messages from 127.0.0.1, so the problem would be to handle "localhost" in a proper way?

[Milton.J]

It is a bad idea to try delivering e-mail to root. alias root to a non-root mailbox. An exim compiled with the default compile-time settings will refuse to deliver e-mail to root by virtue of the FIXED_NEVER_USERS setting.

[etienne]

Why is it a bad idea to _accept_ mail _addressed_ to root (for delivery to a non-root user), if some service in own computer needs to send it? (this is what I tried to ask, sorry if the question was written in a too careless way)

What is a bad idea instead, is to run mail delivery as root, but I think there's no reason to do so since /etc/alias tells to whom this mail should actually be delivered. If alias file tells to deliver it to a regular user, what makes the difference to any other mail?

So, to start my question over, without a need to unnecessarily get stuck with magic word "root": Some service in my own computer would send me mail to timo@localhost instead of using FQDN. How can I make exim 4.50 to accept this? Anyway, I don't want to open new doors for spammers sending me something with to-address set to xxx@localhost

It propably can't be done by simply expanding localhost to default fully qualified name, since it would allow a lot of spam from foreign MTAs. Conditionally rewriting localhost to something else sounds a little bit complicated for this purpose. I guess there should be an easy way to do this...

[Spyrus]

"exim -d -bt root@localhost" will give you the necessary information, otherwise exim -bh might be helpful.

[Steve123]

The issue isn't root or the alias file, it is that Exim does not now how to deliver mail to a domain called localhost. I would suggest that you determine why the process is sending to localhost and not to the FQD or FQ host name or for that matter just to root without the @anything. Do a uname -a and see what your host thinks it's name is. I'm going to guess that is is "localhost" but even if it comes back as the correct host name if it is not listed in the config as a domain or host that you accept mail for Exim will pass it to the DNS router and it will not resolve with a Route for that system ... therefore undeliverable!