Why doesn’t my .forward file work?

The mail server that we currently use is somewhat paranoid about security. If the permissions on any part of the directory in which your ~/.forward exists is group (or world!) writable, it ignores it.

You can check this with the commands:

test1@lab1-31 ~> pwd
/home/test1
test1@lab1-31 ~> ls -ld .
drwxrwxr-x 37 test1 guest 24576 Jan 12 15:39 ./
^ this is the problem.

Change to non-group writable with the command:

test1@lab1-31 ~> chmod g-w .
test1@lab1-31 ~> ls -ld .
drwxr-xr-x 37 test1 guest 24576 Jan 12 15:39 ./

and send yourself some mail to test it.

Posted in: Email Questions