The e-mail handling on the NetCulture servers is very simple yet an extremely powerful facility. Your Virtual Account will be assigned an administration user. This account has control over ALL mail directed to your domain name. You can set-up auto-responders, pipe mail to programs etc. all with simple to set-up commands. It may be worthwhile to PRINT a copy of this page for reference.
Whilst the majority our our clients like the ability to control their mail, some do not. Your mail for full user names will be delivered normally as default. Should you wish to alias users to be created, but do not want to examine the functions of the system, please send a message to accounts@NetCulture.net giving details of your requirements.
As standard in your home directory you will have a '.qmail-xxxx', where 'xxxx' is the name of the administration account for your domain. In this file is a simple line as follows './Mailbox'. What this does is to instruct all mail to be spooled into you 'Mailbox' file ready for collection using your normal POP client software.
If any further full POP accounts have been created on your domain, you will have a further '.qmail-user' file respectively. These files will specify '&user', this tells the mail to be delivered to the local users 'Mailbox'. Note that any mail delivered to your account needs an equivelant '.qmail-xxxx' file for it.
If the mail processor can not find a '.qmail-xxxx' file for the relevant user, it will also look for a '.qmail-default'. If this file exists, any mail that can not be delivered to a local user will be directed as specified. For example if all non-deliverable mail should be sent to the administration account, enter './Mailbox' in the '.qmail-default' file.
*** All files should be be set to read and write permissions for the owner only. An easy way to do this is by using the command 'chmod 600 .qmail*' when in you home directory. If the files are writeable by any other user then the mail will retry, the message will be returned after a certain period. This is for security, if the files are accessible by others, they can filter your mail !!
NOTE: Any accounts with a '.' in their name i.e. j.bloggs, should create the .qmail file as '.qmail-j:bloggs'. Failure to do this will result in bounced mail !
To create Pseudo Users on your domain, simply create a file '.qmail-xxx' where 'xxx' is the name of the user. For example if we wanted mail to 'webmaster@ourdomain.fr' to be redirected to the administration user, then we would create a file called '.qmail-webmaster' and enter the following line './Mailbox'. This would deliver all mail send to 'webmaster@ourdomain.fr' to the local Mailbox directory. If we wanted to redirect mail to other accounts on the Internet, we could change this to '&mark@anotherdomain.com', notice the '&' indicates a redirection.
We can in fact copy the message to multiple users using the following command :-
&mark@anotherdomain.com
&peggy.sue@anywhere.no
&john@somewhere.fr
./Mailbox
This would send a copy of the message to all users indicated in the file. Notice that the last line indicates './Mailbox', this will place a copy of the message into the administration users mail spool file.
NOTE: Auto reponders should NOT be set-up on any mail accounts that use mail lists. If a message is sent through to an account which is accepting mail from a mailing list, the mail will be duplicated throughout the remote list. Any problems created relating to this will be result in the control of mail redirection on your account to be withdrawn and then administered only by our support team. Thank you for your understanding.
Setting up an Auto Responder is very easy. Lets say for example that we want a reply to be automatically sent to any message sent to us. In our '.qmail-username' file we simple indicate the following :-
| qmail-inject -- "$SENDER" < ./text-file
./Mailbox
the above will send a copy of the contents of 'text-file' as a reply to any message sent to this user, and also spool a copy in the users mailbox.
Auto responses can be set-up for full accounts and also redirected accounts.
Please note that your text file which contains your auto reply should contain the following details :-
From: you@yourdomain.fr
Return-Path: you@yourdomain.fr
Subject: Your Subject
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Then the contents of your message.
The format of the first six lines is VERY important. Make sure that there is no space before the colons ' :', but one after it. The blank line indicates that the following is the message detail.
Any number of 'Auto Responders' can be set-up this way. They can be used for real e-mail accounts or 'pseudo' ones detailed above.