Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!usc!bbn.com!rochester!uhura.cc.rochester.edu!sulu.cc.rochester.edu!msir From: msir@sulu.cc.rochester.edu (Mark Sirota) Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail Subject: Re: Intermittent .forward problem Message-ID: <9015@ur-cc.UUCP> Date: 21 Aug 90 18:25:02 GMT References: <9012@ur-cc.UUCP> Sender: news@uhura.cc.rochester.edu Reply-To: Mark Sirota Lines: 28 In article <9012@ur-cc.UUCP> I write: > Sometimes, and I do mean sometimes, our sendmail seems to be ignoring > .forward files, and delivering locally instead. > > This is happening under SunOS 4.0.3, using Sun's sendmail 4.1 (that's the > version number that the $v macro gives, anyway). I've only seen it happen > on one system, but that doesn't mean it's not happening elsewhere. The > home directories on this system are remote-mounted by NFS. > > The .forward files seem to work most of the time; it's just the occasional > letter than gets delivered locally. They don't seem to happen in batches; > time doesn't seem to have anything to do with it, and I just basically have > absolutely no idea what could be going on. Maybe I should clarify this. The problem is *not* file permissions, as many people have suggested to me by mail. The .forward files in question are readable by everyone. It's more like the .forward file seems to be intermittently disappearing. Two people suggested that the NFS mount might be having problems at those times; this sounds reasonable but I don't have any proof. /var/adm/messages does not contain any NFS, RPC, or sendmail errors anywhere near the time of the misdelivered messages. -- Mark Sirota - University of Rochester Computing Center, Rochester NY Internet: msir@cc.rochester.edu Bitnet: msir@uordbv.bitnet UUCP: {decvax,harvard,ames,rutgers}!rochester!ur-cc!msir