Hi,

We are creating a free web based mail system. We are using a dedicated server for the same.

Currently i am finding that when a message is sent to a unknown email address which does not exists like say abcd@987yhjsyshs.com

The mail does not bounce back. How do i make sure that the mail bounces back :) This is important or otherwise our users will think that the message has gone through.

Do we need to configure something on the server.

Please help.

Abhishek

PS: The site we are talking about is http://www.prayforpeace.com/index.php which we are launching tonight on behalf of our customer.

Are you using a certain control panel, or certain mail software?

Which mail software are you using?

We are using Qmail, VPOPMail and Courier- IMAP for the entire mailing application.

Middleware is in PHP and the backend is MySQL :) Though in future we plan to upgrade it to Oracle.

Regards,
Abhishek

Using the qmail system, it's rather simple to create a catch-all address.
use Qmailadmin (if you have it installed, which you probably do).
Create a mail user for this domain.
View users
select the image that represents the bounced user (whichever, I forget), next to your new user (call it nobody, or somethin like that if you wish)

Edit the user;
allow vacation message for this user
edit the vacation message to be your standard response.

save
send mail to anyone@mydomain.com and you should get the message back (if the user doesn't exist).

Alternatively:
go into qmailadmin
select view users:
at the bottom, you will see catch-all bounced. select that and you're done

Personally, I use the first method, because it allows a more comfortable feel, it allows me to control who gets those messages, and (occasionally, when I'm really bored) go through and read the catch-all mail. I think there's a lot to be said for that, personally.. i'd MUCh rather get an email from someone that's been written, even if it's 'I'm sorry, but the user %s doesn't exist on our system. if you need assistance, please contact %s', than the stock(ish) replies.

No No.

My problem is different.
What i want is that when one of my user say abhi@prayforpeace.com sends an email to someone say xyz@hotmail.com. Now xyz@hotmail.com does not exist. I want that abhi@prayforpeace.com should receive the bounced message.

Any suggestion.

Abhishek

Originally posted by talash
No No.
My problem is different.
What i want is that when one of my user say abhi@prayforpeace.com sends an email to someone say xyz@hotmail.com. Now xyz@hotmail.com does not exist. I want that abhi@prayforpeace.com should receive the bounced message.
Any suggestion.
Abhishek
I just told you how to solve your problem.
In the solution I JUST gave you, the scenario would be EXACTly what you want.
mail comes from myuser@mydomain.com
mail goes to (or should go to) youruser@yourdomain.com
youruser@yourdomain.com, doesn't exist:
there's 2 scenarios that can happen from here;
a> this mail is forwarded to nobody@yourdomain.com who in turn auto-replies something like 'I'm sorry, this person doesn't exist to myuser@mydomain.com"
b> this mail is bounced automatically back to myuser@mydomain.com, saying that the user doesn't exist.

Please, read my previous post again. This gives exact specifics on just how to do this.

TJW

The scenario is wrongly understood. :)

This take cares of mails coming into the server with improper user ID so that they get back a error message.

I want to have a solution for messages going our of my server. Say i own talash.net. Now i mail from talash.net domain to some email address that does not exist like abc@dsdkhyff.com. Now i should get a bounced mail back in my account. Right. I am not getting that. How do i get that :)

Abhishek

What's in your /var/qmail/alias directory?

If you haven't already, add:

.qmail-mailer-daemon
.qmail-postmaster
.qmail-root

Put an email address as the first line in each file that you want qmail to forward the respective email to.

edit: Hm, I just re-read your post and this doesn't send the emails back to the user that sent the email in the first place, it only sends bounces that have no where else to go back to the email address you place in those files. Probably not what you're looking for, though.