E-Mail Autoreply
An easy way to distribute information about your company to your potential clientele is to set up an e-mail
autoreply, or autoresponder. An e-mail autoreply is an
E-Mail Alias which executes an autoreply
program that automatically replies to any e-mail sent to it. The e-mail autoreply can be configured to send
any message in the automated reply, such as a FAQ, marketing plan, or product listing.
Note: Autoresponders are notorious for generating so many replies to non-existant spammer
e-mail addresses that a servers disk capacity was soon exceeded with bounced e-mail messages.
Installation
To install the e-mail autoreply program, connect to your Virtual Private Server via
Telnet or SSH and issue the following
command.
% vinstall autoreply
Usage
Follow these steps to create an autoreply.
- Create an autoreply message called ~/.autoreply (the message sent back to the customer) in your
VPS home directory. Use an online file editor, like pico, or transfer the file to your PC in order to
add the alias. Be sure to download and upload the ~/.autoreply file in ASCII mode.
- Add something like the following to your ~/etc/aliases file in order to create an autoreply for
info@YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME:
info: YOU@YOUR.ISP, "|/usr/bin/autoreply -f info-reply -a info"
- Run vnewaliases to update your etc/aliases.db file.
% vnewaliases
When e-mail is received at info@YOUR-DOMAIN.NAME, an autoreply
containing the message in the ~/.autoreply file will be sent back. All e-mail sent to
info@DOMAIN-DOMAIN.NAME will also be sent to YOU@YOUR.ISP. Without
the YOU@YOUR.ISP, the mail from the customer would not be sent to
YOU@YOUR.ISP.
Configuration
Several configuration options are available.
- -m
The -m option specifies a different message file (for example, "autoreply -m /etc/mymessage"). Be sure you
use the full path from your Virtual Server home directory.
- -f
The -f option allows you to change who the autoreply message will be from (in the example above the
"From:" field the customer gets will read "info-reply@DOMAIN_NAME").
- -a
The -a option specifies a user that an autoreply can reply for. The user specified should be the same as the
ser configured for the autoreply (for example, "info: ... -a info").
Virtual Subhost Autoreplies
A Virtmaps alias cannot be directed to
the autoreply program. Instead, the autoreply must be created in the ~/etc/aliases file (as above) and
the virtmaps alias directed to the alias in the ~/etc/aliases file. For example:
Virtmaps (~/etc/virtmaps)
WEBMASTER@subhost-domain.name subhost
Alias (~/etc/aliases)
subhost: you@your.isp, "|/usr/bin/autoreply -f info-reply -a WEBMASTER"
NOTE: Be sure that the username after the -a
option is the same as the alias in the ~/etc/virtmaps file
instead of the e-mail alias in the ~/etc/aliases file.
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