PMDF System Manager's Guide


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38.5.7 Setting Up Pseudo Post Offices

You can configure PMDF and cc:Mail so that cc:Mail users perceive that they are sending mail to another cc:Mail post office when in fact they are really sending mail to some other remote enclave which can or can not in fact be using cc:Mail. PMDF can gateway messages without the cc:Mail users ever being the wiser.

For instance, suppose that you will be connecting your local cc:Mail users with a remote cc:Mail post office named NEWYORK, where the NEWYORK post office is really a UNIX system named ny.example.com reachable via the Internet. Note that this already works using your standard PMDF cc:Mail channel configuration, but it requires that the cc:Mail users use the address format user@nu.example.com The goal here is to simplify the addressing format so that cc:Mail users simply send to user at NEWYORK just as they would for any other cc:Mail post office.

This can appear to be the same as the FAN (foreign alias name) setup discussed in Section 38.5.6. However when mail is received in cc:Mail from a user in a pseudo post office, the From: address looks like a normal cc:Mail post office. Thus the illusion of a post office is more complete with this scheme. A combination of both can be useful depending on your specific site configuration.

Mail coming from ny.example.com into cc:Mail would appear as though it originated from a cc:Mail post office, i.e., bear a From: address of "user at NEWYORK" instead of "user@ny.example.com at PMDF". To achieve this you need to add additional rewrite rules to your PMDF configuration file.

To your PMDF configuration file lan.rules, add the following rewrite rules to the existing rewrite rules for ny.example.com (if any):


ny.example.com     $U%ny.example.com@TCP-DAEMON$E$F 
ny.example.com     $U$%NEWYORK@ccmail.example.com$Qcc_local 
ny.example.com     $U%ny.example.com@TCP-DAEMON 
And, add the following channel definitions to that same file:


cc_newyork master 
ny.example.com 

Next, you will need to create an option file, PMDF_TABLE:cc_newyork_option. on OpenVMS or /pmdf/table/cc_newyork_option on UNIX, for this pseudo cc:Mail post office called NEWYORK. In the option file you might have entires such as these on OpenVMS


! On OpenVMS 
CC_GATEWAY_NAME=NEWYORK 
CC_OUTPUT_FILE_NAME=diska:[ccmail.pmdf]ccmailny.imp 
CC_INPUT_FILE_NAME=diska:[ccmail.pmdf]ccmailny.exp 
CC_UNDEL_FILE_NAME=diska:[ccmail.pmdf]ccmailny.und 
CC_POSTOFFICE_HOST=ny.example.com 
CC_PRIMARY_HOST=ccmail.example.com 
or such as these on UNIX


! On UNIX 
CC_GATEWAY_NAME=NEWYORK 
CC_OUTPUT_FILE_NAME=diska/ccmail/pmdf/ccmailny.imp 
CC_INPUT_FILE_NAME=diska/ccmail/pmdf/ccmailny.exp 
CC_UNDEL_FILE_NAME=diska/ccmail/pmdf/ccmailny.und 
CC_POSTOFFICE_HOST=ny.example.com 
CC_PRIMARY_HOST=ccmail.example.com 
Here, CC_POSTOFFICE_HOST is the name of the host corresponding to the pseudo post office. Mail addressed to that post office will be rerouted to the host specified by CC_POSTOFFICE_HOST. In this case, the NEWYORK post office is rerouted to ny.example.com.

CC_PRIMARY_HOST is the name of the real cc:Mail gateway, e.g., ccmail.example.com in the examples of Section 38.5.3.2. CC_POSTOFFICE_HOST defaults to PMDF's official local host name while CC_PRIMARY_HOST defaults to the official name associated with this cc:Mail channel.


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