Prevent root from expanding domain so can mail to alias

My brain is fried. I've searched the net for 72 hours in trying to
find out how to do a very simple thing in sendmail. which is for my
server to send nightly logwatch reports normally destined for the
LOCAL root mail account ON A SYSTEM THAT HAS A PRIVATE IP BEHIND A
FIREWALL TO an EXTERNAL LIVE EMAIL ADDRESS via an alias. Make sense?

Let me see if I can simplify this.

# cat /etc/aliases

root: name@isp.com

# newaliases

When I send a message to root

# echo test | mail -s test root

I want it to immediately be sent to the external alias for root -
name@isp.com.

BUT IT NEVER DOES. Instead, sendmail wants to first expand 'root'
mail acount to a FQDN per my /etc/hosts or hostname setting. In
effect, email to root now becomes:

root@bogusprivatedomain.com

OR if i use a real registered domain for another server i have.

root@realdomain.com


If i use first technique, it appears my localhost can't find a real
domain as it tries to send message from root@bogusprivatedomain.com TO
root@bogusprivatedomain.com. It then gets a DSN error and oddly
enough, then my MAILER DAEMON (which is aliased to root which is
aliased to name@isp.com) forwards the errored email to
name@isp.com??????????

If i use the second technique, it will try to send FROM
root@realdomain.com TO root@realdomain.com, open up what appears to be
a connection to realdomain.com and send the mail to it. That prevents
the DSN error. But once it sends to the realdomain.com, (which i
don't think it should do in the first place) it never aliases to
name@isp.com. So the mail is never received externally like i want it
to.

It's a catch 22. Using a real domain in a fictious private network
sendmail server behind a firewall allows the mail to be sent but it
never gets to the alias. If i use a fake bogus domain, the mail never
gets sent and somehow the failure then does route to name@isp.com.

How does one achieve such a simple thing i'm trying to do?

I don't need any inbound mail. I don't want any outbound mail except
these silly logwatch mails so i can montior the health of this server
remotely and on a daily basis. This server does live behind a
firewall on a private address so it has no real MX record associated
with it.

I've read everything under the sun and i can't get this to work.

Can someone tell me how to fix the setup i have? How do i prevent
expansion of the FQDN and immediate send to the alias?

If you have a simpler method of doing this using another method or
mailer i'm game.

fwiw, i've got centos5 running.

Re: Prevent root from expanding domain so can mail to alias

Hi

googlee07@yahoo.com wrote:
> My brain is fried. I've searched the net for 72 hours in trying to
> find out how to do a very simple thing in sendmail. which is for my
> server to send nightly logwatch reports normally destined for the
> LOCAL root mail account ON A SYSTEM THAT HAS A PRIVATE IP BEHIND A
> FIREWALL TO an EXTERNAL LIVE EMAIL ADDRESS via an alias. Make sense?
>
> Let me see if I can simplify this.
>
> # cat /etc/aliases
>
> root: name@isp.com
>
> # newaliases
>
> When I send a message to root
>
> # echo test | mail -s test root
>
> I want it to immediately be sent to the external alias for root -
> name@isp.com.
>
> BUT IT NEVER DOES. Instead, sendmail wants to first expand 'root'
> mail acount to a FQDN per my /etc/hosts or hostname setting. In
> effect, email to root now becomes:

If you look in your mail log, I am certain that you will find a reason
for this behaviour. If not, then someone in this list will certainly be
able to tell you. Without information it is pure guesswork.

cheers

Erich