[Discuss] I'm getting mail for "nobody"

[tmetro+blu at gmail.com (Tom Metro)]

Bill Horne wrote:
> I just noticed that my new server is accepting mail for "nobody".
> Which is probably not a good thing. ;-)

You probably want to alias nobody to root or your designated admin user,
if it is not already, so you can catch error messages that might end up
there.

I'm assuming your concern is with respect to external senders trying to
reach nobody. You probably don't want them emailing root either.

See:
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/~jnw/SysAdminsp01/Lectures/postfix-html/faq.html#bogus

That explanation falls a bit short of spelling out the specifics. I
don't know what the canonical recommended solution is for setting up a
mapping table for allowing only a subset of local users to receive mail
from external senders. (I normally use Postfix either with trivial,
default setups that relay mail to a smart host, or with virtual domains
and maps, where local users are not relevant.)

The above would suggest altering the local_recipient_maps parameter, but
it's quite possible that the preferred solution is to employ virtual
domains, and have your local machine be identified as something
different from what your machine is publicly known as. That way you can
set up a rule to accept mail for users in /etc/passwd and /etc/aliases
only from the localhost, and for everything else consult a virtual map.

 -Tom

-- 
Tom Metro
The Perl Shop, Newton, MA, USA
"Predictable On-demand Perl Consulting."
http://www.theperlshop.com/