Very Computer

We have an alias here called "allusers" which contains everybody's email        
address.  So "allusers" alias is being used for site-wide distribution of      
email.                                                                          

Let's say I send to "allusers" a notice about a server going down.  Some users  
tend to do a "group" reply to my email, and ends up sending the reply to the    
entire site, since "allusers" gets inserted into the "Cc:" list.   I want to    
force them to reply to the originator(me) only.  Is there a simple way I can    
do that by tweaking around with my sendmail configuration, or by any other      
 means?                                                                        

We are using sendmail v8.6.12 here for SunOS and "allusers" is an NIS alias.
                                                                                Thanks a lot.                                                                  

Quote:>We have an alias here called "allusers" which contains everybody's email    
>address.  So "allusers" alias is being used for site-wide distribution of    
>email.                                                                      

>Let's say I send to "allusers" a notice about a server going down.  Some
users  
>tend to do a "group" reply to my email, and ends up sending the reply to the
>entire site, since "allusers" gets inserted into the "Cc:" list.   I want to
>force them to reply to the originator(me) only.  Is there a simple way I can
>do that by tweaking around with my sendmail configuration, or by any other  
> means?

        A Keep It Simple idea: Try sending the mail to yourself only and
Bcc:'ing it to the alias.                                          

        That should work, shouldn't it?                      

  Peter Abeln, Ordinary Person  "All of the true things I am about
 [this space for sale or rent]   to tell you are shameless lies."

    (314) 341 8653              "Truth suffers from too much analysis"
   finger for pgp key                  -- Frank Herbert, _Dune_Messiah_

|>We have an alias here called "allusers" which contains everybody's email    
|>address.  So "allusers" alias is being used for site-wide distribution of    
|>email.                                                                      

|>tend to do a "group" reply to my email, and ends up sending the reply to the
|>entire site, since "allusers" gets inserted into the "Cc:" list.   I want to
|>force them to reply to the originator(me) only.  Is there a simple way I can
|>do that by tweaking around with my sendmail configuration, or by any other  
|> means?

how about....
#!/bin/csh -f
foreach usr (`ls /usr/people`)
      Mail $usr < letter
end

Of course, isn't it standard practice to put downtime notification in
/etc/motd instead?
--

--mark

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            System Administrator
    http://elvis.rowan.edu/~mark             http://elvis.rowan.edu/~unix
 I may be paranoid, but that doesn't mean that everyone isn't out to get me!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Try setting Reply-to: in your message header.

--

================================================================

Information Technology Group      === Phone: 64 9 307-9999 x8133
Auckland Institute of Technology  === Fax:   64 9 307-9902
PO Box 92006, Auckland, New Zealand =
================================================================
Einstein was right, the world goes on in spite of us.
================================================================

Don't do this!  Mail usually invokes a "sendmail" process in the
background, and a shell script like this can bring a system to
its knees if you have more than a few users...

It can be awfully difficult to kill your command when the load average
is up around 45 on a single processor box... :-)

Alan

Don't do this!  Mail usually invokes a "sendmail" process in the
background, and a shell script like this can bring a system to
its knees if you have more than a few users...

It can be awfully difficult to kill your command when the load average
is up around 45 on a single processor box... :-)

Alan