Local Delivery

All destination domains that should be handled by the local transport should be listed in the mydestination parameter. You can list as many domains as you like, but individual local users receive mail at all of the domains listed. For example, if both ora.com and oreilly.com are listed in mydestination, then messages to either kdent@ora.com or kdent@oreilly.com go to the same local mailbox.

All local recipients should be listed in tables configured in the local_recipient_maps parameter to avoid accepting messages for unknown users. By default, local_recipient_maps is set to the system password file and alias maps, so you normally don’t have to make any changes. Once Postfix has determined that it is the final destination for a message, and that the message should be delivered locally, it has to decide what to do with the message.

Before looking for a user account that matches the local part of the email address, Postfix consults its alias maps (see Chapter 4). If there is a forwarding alias that matches the recipient address, Postfix resubmits the message as a new delivery, based on the forwarding information from the alias lookup. Otherwise, it tries to deliver the message to a user on the system. Postfix first checks for the existence of a .forward file for the local user, and may resubmit the message based on information there. If no .forward exists for the user, Postfix delivers the message to the user’s mailbox.

.forward Files

.forward files allow local users ...

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