Jerry Geis writes:

I have been trying to find out if the /etc/aliases file can accept wildcards in the user name

I was hoping that a line like or similiar:

machine*: myaccount

would take any name matching machine* and forward onto the myaccount mailbox.

man aliases didnt really help me nor did I find anything else. Is there a way to pattern match in /etc/aliases with an * or something?

Not supported. Maybe doable in postfix with header_checks and REDIRECT.

If you control the recipient address on the sending end, you could change it to myaccount+machine@domain and not need the alias.

Or if you know all possible values of machine*, use a script or Makefile to generate a file with all these aliases and :include it in your main aliases file. The disadvantage is this is not maintenance-free.

On Wed, Oct 28, 2009 at 3:14 AM, Jerry Geis geisj@pagestation.com wrote:

I have been trying to find out if the /etc/aliases file can accept wildcards in the user name

I was hoping that a line like or similiar:

machine*: myaccount

would take any name matching machine* and forward onto the myaccount mailbox.

man aliases didnt really help me nor did I find anything else. Is there a way to pattern match in /etc/aliases with an * or something?

Thanks,

Jerry

I think that it is possible to do this by using postfix and the /etc/postfix/virtual config file.

Regards,

Radu