On 2022-04-27 14:31:51 -0400, Greg Wooledge wrote: > Funny thing, though... I'm not sure that /etc/mailname actually does > anything other than sit there looking cute. Reading farther along in > <https://wiki.debian.org/EtcMailName>, it says: > > Exim (i.e. exim 3.x) doesn't read /etc/mailname at all. When you > configure it, it prompts you for what it calls the "visible name" > of the system. This is stored in /etc/mailname, and also used in a > few places in the exim config file. > > But also: > > Failing to come up with something better exim4 (and mutt) use mailname > to qualify recipients and therefore exim4 makes mailname a local > domain. If people don't want that, they delete it from the list in > the debconf dialog. > > I'm honestly not sure how to interpret that paragraph about exim4.
This means that if you send a mail to "foo" (without a @ followed by a domain), then "foo" will be qualified with the mailname, i.e. adding "@" followed by the contents of /etc/mailname. So, if you have two machines host1.domain.tld and host2.domain.tld, since their users may be different (typically, root), I think that it is better to have mailname = FQDN of the machine. Otherwise, mailname = domain.tld may be fine. > They're using "local domain" as a technical term with a highly > specific meaning, but it's something unique to exim4, and I don't > use exim4 myself. No, "local domain" just means that the mail is received locally. If domain.tld is a local domain, then mail sent to f...@domain.tld will be sent to the mailbox foo on the local machine instead of being sent through the smarthost (or directly to a MX). This is not specific to exim. -- Vincent Lefèvre <vinc...@vinc17.net> - Web: <https://www.vinc17.net/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <https://www.vinc17.net/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / AriC project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)
