Mail Forwarding on OS X Server 10.5 Leopard: Using /etc/aliases

I like to have my mailserver set up so that mail sent to apache@www.example.com (through a relay at mail.example.com) comes to one of my email addresses.

On my old crufty Mac OS X Server mailserver, which runs postfix, I was wondering why mail sent to apache@www.example.com was not getting delivered, even though in /etc/aliases on mail.example.com clearly had the entries

apache: root
root: myemailaddress@mydomain.com

Instead, I was receiving errors like relay=cyrus, delay=0.13, delays=0.02/0.02/0/0.09, dsn=4.3.0, status=deferred (temporary failure. Command output: couldn't connect to lmtpd: No such file or directory_ 421 4.3.0 deliver: couldn't connect to lmtpd_

I was able to fix this by changing the relay from cyrus to local. That was OK since I am not using cyrus anyway; I have no local accounts on the mailserver.

I made the change by clicking a checkbox called "Deliver to "/var/mail" when POP & IMAP are disabled" in the OS X Server GUI.

The change has the effect of changing a line in /etc/postfix/main.cf.

Before:

mailbox_transport = cyrus

After:

mailbox_transport =

Postfix will now use the local transport, which actually checks /etc/aliases and delivers accordingly.

And yes, this is my last OS X Server and it's on the list to be migrated to RHEL.

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