DRH Internet Inc. Website hosting technical support library

An email action is what the mail server does with a message recieved for a certain adress. Messages can be forwarded to email users, unix users, or other addresses; or it can cause a program to be executed or reply to be sent. One incoming address can cause multiple actions or be forwarded multiple places, and multiple incoming addresses can cause one action or forwarded to on place.

Managing email actions

Email actions are managed via the web control panel in the Email > Actions section (they can also be manage by editing a configuration file, but this should only be done by advanced users and is not covered here). Once there you will see a list of incoming addresses, actions, and destinations, or arguments. There may also be comments which will appear in bold italic text. To edit any of these items click the small [e] beside it . To add a new incoming adress and action click "new incoming address" near the top of the page. The first three fields are the incoming address information. The incoming address can be a user @ your domain, or just a user. The rest of the fields are the action information. The combo box contains the types of actions.

The "Forward to" action is for forwarding to another email address (i.e. user@anotherhost.com), The rest are self explainatory, but you must click "Change Type" after selecting an action.
For the run program action, enter the program with full path information and arguments just as it would be done from the command line. The contents of the message will be available to the program on standard input.

Comments can be used to make the email forwarding information more managable. Incoming addresses can be grouped, or explained. Comments are added by clicking the "new comment record" button at the top of the page. And they can be moved like a normal entry.

The order in which the addresses are listed can be changed by click "change order" at the top of the page. Simply select the records to be moved (check boxes), the select a location (option buttons), and click Move.

If there are only a few users on you email server, it might be a good idea to use the @host.com incoming address, so that if some one is trying to contact you but enters the wrong user you will still get the message. If there are allot of email users on your system, you will end up getting emails meant for other users, where some one entered the wrong address, and the sender may never realize this. Instead, set the @host.com address to bounce with a custom message or delete the @host.com entry all together. For a system with multiple domain names, it is a good Idea to omit the @host.com part and user only the username for the incoming adress, this will allow the entries to work with all your domains.

Search Order

When the email server recieves a message and is try to find the apropriate action, it searches the action list not only in the order in which it is written. First it looks for the full incoming address (user@host.com), then for just the user, and finally for just the domain (@host.com). If none of these are found it returns the default "address not found" message to the sender.