<OT>?? email recipients

[James McDonald]

Rick Bowers wrote:
> Quite some time ago, probably on this list, I asked about having a
> "general" email account rather than hundreds of individual accounts (I
> run my own mail server at the house using SME Server).
>
> It was recommended/suggested that I could use my base mail ID, a
> hyphen ('-') and any other string and I would still receive the
> messages. So, I started setting up mail IDs for any company that asked
> me for an email address as Rick-companyname at mydomain.xxx
>
> So, I have hundreds of email IDs like
> Rick-AmericanExpress at mydomain.xxx and Rick-Comcast at mydomain.xxx and
> Rick-linux-sxs at mydomain.xxx etc.
>
> This has all (seemingly) been working fine. All the messages arrive,
> and I use message filters to direct the emails to individual mailboxes.
>
> e.g.     Rick-AmericanExpress at mydomain.xxx    -> Accounts/AmericanExpress
>     Rick-Comcast at mydomain.xxx         -> Accounts/Comcast
>     Rick-linux-sxs at mydomain.xxx         -> MailLists/linux-sxs.Org
>
> It turns out this is only working because I have setup my DNS to
> forward any unspecified messages to a general email account
> (Catchall at mydomain.xxx). I hadn't noticed because the filters were
> handling all the incoming messages just fine. I assumed/understood
> that any message sent to Rick-foo at mydomain.xxx would be automatically
> delivered to Rick at mydomain.xxx
>
> I recently added a new domain name and use a different DNS provider.
> For that provider I haven't/can't setup a "catchall account". So mail
> messages to Rick-foo at newdomain.xxx get bounced while
> Rick at newdomain.xxx gets delivered.
>
> Did I completely misunderstand the Rick-yyy at mydomain.xxx philosophy or
> have I setup something wrong? Is there a way to do what I want without
> specifying rules at the DNS?
I don't think you have a DNS problem. DNS deals with everything to the
right of the @. Which when setup correctly will deliver *@mydomain.xxx
to which ever server is listed as your primary MX. So you should look at
your mailserver configuration.

It sounds like your DNS provider is also providing a primary MX which
defines mailboxes and a catchall at that level and then forwards to your
Mailserver (correct me if I'm wrong).

It's possible your mainaccount-incomingSubject at mydomain.xxx syntax never
actually worked and the catchall facility was providing the
functionality you needed.

So to fix it you need to either A. Get your mail server to recognize the
mainaccount-company at mydomain.xxx syntax or B. associate all your aliases
with the correct mail box.