Question

All,

I’m trying to set up a system whereby emails sent to a certain address get piped to a PHP script for processing.

Thanks to StackOverflow, I’ve found this on-point article:

http://www.evolt.org/incoming_mail_and_php

However, I’ve got a few simple/stupid questions about it:

First, in that article, you edit the /etc/aliases file and add an entry that looks like this:

script: "|/usr/bin/processingScript.php"

Does that mean that the email address you’d use is “script@[mydomain].com”?

Or, if I wanted the email address that I’d use to send emails for processing to be “[e-mail]”, then the entry in the alias file would be:

processthis: "|/usr/bin/processingScript.php"

As an aside – should the entry actually have quotes around the script name, or is this just a typo in the article?

Next question… should there actually be a mail account on my server with this address? In other words, should I create a “[e-mail]” account? (This is a really dumb question, but I don’t understand how aliases work).

Next question… I’ve read that when you edit the aliases file, you should run “newaliases” or “sendmail -bi” to tell sendmail to rebuild it’s aliases database.

However, on my server (a MediaTemple DV server), there’s no “newaliases” program, and “-bi” does not appear to be a valid parameter for sendmail. When I try it, I get this:

sendmail: usage: sendmail [ -t ] [ -fsender ] [ -Fname ] [ -bp ] [ -bs ] [ arg ... ]

(I realize that this might be a MediaTemple question, but maybe someone here has some insight…)

Many thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Matt Stuehler

Answer 1

1. Short answer: yes. Long answer: “[mydomain].com” can be any of the domains the MTA is responsible for handling.

2. I do not recall ever using quotes in my pipe aliases.

3. There is no need to have a real account with the same name as an alias.

4. It might not actually be sendmail per se, but rather another MTA masquerading as sendmail.