MkLinux: Getting Started[an error occurred while processing this directive]: What now?

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Getting Started[an error occurred while processing this directive]: What now?


Think Differently. Think MkLinux.

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Collecting root mail

Your new system is configured to conduct a number of maintenance activities in the background without your intervention. These include building databases of file names and locations, log rotation, building keyword search databases the online help system and many other tasks. These tasks are generally run in the early hours of the morning. If you find your machine suddenly unresponsive at one or two o'clock in the morning due to heavy disk activity, don't worry. This is normal system activity. In fact, you will want to be keep your machine up and running overnight periodically to ensure that these system maintenance activities are conducted.

Reports on unattended system maintenance are generally mail to the root user's account. This is particularly true if a problem occurs during the process. If the system is running smoothly, then you may go for weeks without logging into the root user account. Any reports of problems from the system will go unnoticed by you. Obviously, you can remember to log in as root on a regular basis to check the mail, but there is a more direct method.

Sendmail has the ability to define aliases for users. This is an association between one user name and another. For instance, if joe1 is an alias for joe2, then any mail received for joe1 will be delivered to user joe2. As your own system administrator, you will want to redirect mail for the root user to be received by your personal account.

In order to redirect root's mail to your personal account, you will need to log in as root. Edit the file /etc/aliases. At the bottom of the file, add the lines

# Person who should get root's mail
root:       username

Where username is the login name of the account which should receive root's mail. Only root can edit this file, so guard the password to the root account!

Next you need to run the utility newaliases. If you have not done so already, save your changes to the file /etc/aliases and return to the command line. Now type newaliases and return. This application builds the database used by sendmail. Simiply editing the file /etc/aliases is not sufficient. Your system will be unaware of the changes to that file until you run newaliases.

From now on, mail directed to the root user will be delivered to the user specified in the previous steps. This will relieve you of the burden of remembering to check root's mail on a regular basis.

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Copyright (©) 2001 MkLinux Developers Association. Permission to freely distribute this document is hereby granted, provided that it is distributed at no charge other than normal connect-time charges. All rights other than those specifically granted above are reserved.