Autoreply with sendmail

UNIX for Advanced & Expert Users
1

Hello,
I need to put autoreply on a lot of mailbox due to adressing change and don't know how to do it ? I'm especially looking for an easy way because I've got up to 500 users to modify.
Thanks for your help.

2

Try using 'vacation'

We use it in work for auto responding to mail sent to an address.

Presumably, you just need to write a script to set up the .forward and .vacation files in each users home directory.

for more information, try 'man vacation'

hope this helps,
-gHotI

3

Thanks for your help. I'll try.

4

Sorry, after many test it is not working with vacation. I'll try adding this to my aliases file:
userid:userid@x.x.com, "|/usr/ucb/vacation brunean -m /etc/test"
Is this correct ?
The redirection is to an Exchange Server, could this be the problem ?
Thanks for help

5

The exact usage that I am using in our system, is as follows.

The file ".forward" must be present in the home directory, and set up as follows:

\username, "|vacation -j username"

and the file ".vacation.msg" must also be present, and containing a reply message to be sent out.

to check if it works on your system, just run 'vacation' (No args) and it will open up a text editor for you and let you edit the reply message.
When you save and quit the text editor, it should have created a ".forward" and a ".vacation.msg" file in the home directory of that user, which should follow the format shown above. (Verify this with a 'ls -a' command)

Then send that user a mail, and see if you get a reply from it.

Otherwise, what OS/version are you running, what program are you using to send mail etc.....

HTH,
-gHoTi

6

It is still not working. We are using sendmail 4.0 I think (very old version I know) . We need to remove the UNIX mail system and switch all the users on Exchange 5.5 mail system. The configuration in aliases file is:
alias:exchangemailadress
All the incoming mails are forwarding to the Exchange mailbox. I need to put an autoreply on this to alert sender of the internet mail adress change.

Le serveur Sendmail est un SunOS 4.1.4.

Thanks for help

7

hi annececile,

As far as I know the aliases file is pretty much just for setting up mailing lists etc.

When you run the vacation program, what happens? do you get an error message? does it create the .forward and .vacation.msg files?

[you need to use 'ls -a' to show files with names beginning in "."]

regards,
-gHoTi