[Info-vax] email forwarding

[Phillip Helbig---remove CLOTHES to reply]

In article
<8cb8c165-18eb-42b0-82eb-bcd477c64e14 at z1g2000yqn.googlegroups.com>,
sapienzaf <sapienza at noesys.com> writes: 

> On Mar 14, 3:03 pm, hel... at astro.multiCLOTHESvax.de (Phillip Helbig---
> remove CLOTHES to reply) wrote:
> > From the account whose mail should be forwarded:
> >
> >    MAIL> SET FORWARD <address to be forwarded to>

Useful for an individual user who wants to forward his mail elsewhere.

> > From a priviledged account:
> >
> >    MAIL> SET FORWARD/USER=foobar <address to be forwarded to>
> >
> 
> No additions from me.  That is the method I use.

Which is fine for normal cases, especially when setting up aliases.  

$  DEFINE/SYSTEM FOO BAR

The logical name can be useful if the forwarding address is changed
often. With MAIL> SET FORWARD, one has to go into the MAIL utility. 
>From a procedure, this means writing a temporary procedure (I/O) and
executing it (more I/O).  With a logical name, it is all done in memory.
IIRC, it has to be in the SYSTEM table.  It would be nice if it could be 
in LNM$SYSCLUSTER.  Presumably, MAIL looks explicitly in the SYSTEM 
table for security reasons, and LNM$SYSCLUSTER came much later.

The distribution list in TCPIP$SMTP_COMMON (which I've defined as a 
search-list logical name; the second translation is the default one 
(SYS$SPECIFIC:[TCPIP$SMTP]) and the first one is on a non-system disk) 
is, as far as I know, the only way to forward email to a list.  It is 
also, as far as I know, the only way to forward email while keeping all 
the headers in one block, so that they will be recognised as headers.

(Just noticed this: If one enters a list as in 

   MAIL> SET FORWARD/USER=TEST name1,name2

one gets the message 

   %CLI-W-NOLIST, list of parameter values not allowed - check use of comma (,)

If one puts the list in quotes, no error then, but there is when sending 
to the "username" TEST: 

   %MAIL-E-USERSPEC, invalid user specification ',name2'

I also typed, by mistake, 

   MAIL> SET NOFORWARD/USER=*

Fortunately, this doesn't delete all the forwarding addresses.  :-|  )