Re: Remote .forward lookups

[Matti Aarnio <mea@utu.fi>]

> Our site has two main servers: one strictly for mail and one the users log
> into.  Their home directories are housed on their home machine.  Is there
> a way (other than NFS mounting the partitions) to query the users machine
> for their .forward file information?  My guess is that someone has run
> into this problem before and I wouldn't want to "re-invent the wheel". 
> 
> The reason why NFS mounting is not a viable alternative is not easily
> explained and not particularly relevant to the problem, anyway. 

	Had I decided to go and implement that, I would have done
	following kind of program:

	for (pwd = getpwent(); pwd != NULL; pwd = getnextpwent()) {
		char buf[500];
		struct stat stbuf;
		sprintf(buf,"%s/.forward",pwd->pw_home);
		if (stat(buf,&stbuf) == 0) { /* Exists */
			/* Print out:
				username \t uid \t contents of .forward on one line with ","s in between input lines
			 */
		}
	}

	The output would be then collected into a file several times a day,
	and copied into another machine to use it.

	I leave it as an excercise on how to use the produced database :-)

	Do note that printing the contents of .forward is not quite trivial..
	There are a LOT of assuptions, like implicite " , " at the newline,
	IF there is something non-white following.  Also an always happening
	parsing break at that newline causes abrupt RFC-822 stop (well,
	only on .forward, not on email headers!)

	Such parser should be pretty smart...  (Or its limitations be
	acknowledged.)

	I understand that you have no escape from running some user
	programs on the mailer machine, if users decide to want such.
	(As email filters.)

> If it is relevant, we are running SunOS 4.1.4 and Rayan's zmailer.
> 
> Thanks for your time and any hints or pointers.
> 
> --
>     _/_/_/_/ _/_/_/   _/_/_/ _/    _/ Gordon J. Cook
>    _/       _/   _/    _/   _/_/  _/ Erindale College Computing Services
>   _/_/_/   _/_/_/     _/   _/ _/ _/ University of Toronto, Canada
>  _/       _/  _/     _/   _/  _/_/ gcook@credit.erin.utoronto.ca
> _/_/_/_/ _/    _/ _/_/_/ _/    _/ (905)828-5339

	/Matti Aarnio	<mea@utu.fi> <mea@nic.funet.fi>