[adamberti]

Well, it's that time of the year and some people on my server are needing vacation reply emails. It's my first Winter Break as the system admin! Most people use Squirrel Mail for their email, and in it's current form there is no auto-reply feature. I know it is available via a plugin, but it requires re-compiling PHP to allow FTP support. Don't really want to do that at this point. I thought I saw an easy way to make vacation reply's using postfix, but that's OS X Server 10.3 only. I'm running 10.2

So I don't mind setting up a few peoples .forward and .vacation.msg files myself, but I cannot get it to work.

I've followed the man pages, I've tried various instructions from around the web, but I get nothing. When I run $ vacation -I, all it does is make a .vacation.db file, and fills it with nothing readable ($ vacation -l). I understand that it should make the .forward file and possibly ask for some input. I went ahead and followed everything and made the files that didnt exist.

So I've got my .forward file containing this:

Code:
\adam, "|/usr/bin/vacation -C /private/etc/mail/sendmail.cf -a adam"

My .vacation.msg file looks like this:

Code:
From: Adam Berti <xxx@xxxxxxxxx.xxx>
Subject: I am on vacation

I am on vacation until January 7.  If you have something urgent,
please contact Ben Li, xxxxxx@xxxxx.xxx
              --Adam

So, if anyone has suggestions on how to troubleshoot this, I would appreciate it. thanks.

[samthecat]

hi,

i use vacation as well, but my .forward files are simpler...

Code:
\adam, "|/usr/local/bin/vacation adam"

that may have something to do with the version of vacation, however (i use 1.2.6)

i have also put together a very simple email interface for the vacation programme. you can have a look at the very limited info at http://www.rpsnetworks.com.au/vacation


cheers,

samthecat

[adamberti]

thanks samthecat! I only had a chance for a quick peek at your program, but I think I will give it a try.

As for your simpler method of calling vacation, what you wrote is what I had before. I was just trying things to make it work (like setting the location of vacation, and using the alias flag)

I'll let you know once I look a little more thoroughly at your code.

Cheers

[samthecat]

i should apologise because i missed your comment that you were running 10.2. to use my code you will have to install bash (or ksh, i'd expect). i didn't want to write a long script in (t)csh, and bash is standard on 10.3.

maybe just look at the part which actually creates the vacation and forward files for each user? i know that it works since i use it myself (on two sites), so, there might just be a configuration issue with your machine. i hope you can read through the code...i tried to comment it, but well, it was hard to write so it should be hard to understand ;)

what version of vacation are you using? did it require the installation of gdbm?

cheers,

samthecat