asked on

NDR's coming from postmaster@mydoman.com

HI!

WE HAVE EXCHANGE 2003. BELOW IS THE NDR SOMEONE CURRENTLY GETS WHEN THEY SEND MAIL TO A NON-EXISTING ACCOUNT (JOE, FOR EXAMPLE) IN OUR DOMAIN.

From: postmaster@mydomain.com
Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

joe@mydomain.com

I'VE NOTICED THAT POSTMASTER@MYDOMAIN.LOCAL EXISTS UNDER THE ADMINISTRATOR'S E-MAIL TAB IN THE ADUC, BUT NOT POSTMASTER@MYDOMAIN.COM. SO WHEN SOMEONE REPLIES TO THE NDR (POSTMASTER@MYDOMAIN.COM) THEY GET ANOTHER NDR FROM THE POSTMASTER AGAIN THIS TIME SAYING:

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

postmaster@mydomain.com

SO, WHAT I'D LIKE TO DO IS TO SET UP A "POSTMASTER" USER ACCOUNT IN ADUC, THEN CREATE AN OUTLOOK ACCOUNT AND THEN SET UP AN AUTOREPLY RULE (OUT OF OFFICE) WITH A MESSAGE TELLING THE SENDER TO GO TO OUR WEBSITE AND CONTACT US VIA THE CONTACT FORM.

MY QUESTION IS, DO I NEED TO REMOVE THE POSTMASTER@MYDOMAIN.LOCAL FROM THE ADMINISTRATOR'S ADUC E-MAIL SECTION FIRST? WILL THIS AFFECT ANY OF THE NDR'S?

THANKS,

CLARK

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

ikm7176

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ikm7176

And here is the brief overview for you at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/prodtechnol/exchange/guides/OperationsGuide/41bddd59-d365-4f86-b644-fa1b1efcb2db.mspx

Managing the Postmaster Mailbox

The postmaster mailbox is an account that receives NDRs and sends delivery status reports of messages to the sender. By default, Exchange Server 2003 creates the postmaster proxy address and designates this address to the user who created the Exchange organization. If you need multiple postmaster mailboxes, you can use event sinks to create additional postmaster mailboxes.

Depending on your organization's requirements, you may want to change this default assignment to avoid exposure of your administrator account to external users.

Note

Requests for Comments (RFC) 2822 defines a reserved address for the postmaster. For more information about RFCs, see http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc.html.

To designate a specific user's mailbox as the postmaster mailbox for any local SMTP domain that is created, you can manually add the proxy postmaster@localdomainname to the user's list of SMTP proxy addresses.

Managing the postmaster mailbox may involve the following high-level tasks:

Depending on your organization's requirements, you may need to decide whether to:

Associate a single e-mail account with the postmaster, such as your Help desk mailbox account.

Create a dedicated postmaster account that will be used when NDRs are sent.

If you are creating a dedicated postmaster account, you will need to designate access to the postmaster’s mailbox to the appropriate support staff. You can manage a dedicated mailbox in the following ways:

Create a dedicated account and log on as that account by using an Outlook profile, and then respond to the account messages.

Delegate Send As permissions on the account to the person who typically manages the mailbox, and then add the mailbox to their Outlook profile.

You should establish a regular schedule, such as a weekly schedule, for reviewing and responding to the delivery reports in the mailbox. For example, you may want to respond to messages in which the e-mail alias is incorrect and then notify the sender that they must update their records. The schedule you establish should be based on your organization’s requirements. Some organizations make this a daily task to try to reduce the number of e-mail messages that are delivered to users who are no longer with the company, while other companies make this a weekly or monthly maintenance task.

Determine whether you want a copy of all NDRs to be sent to the postmaster account.

killyman

ASKER

Thanks ikm7176,

I went ahead and removed postmaster@mydomain.local from the administrator's ADUC e-mail section.

Then I created a new user named "Postmaster" with an e-mail address of postmaster@mydomain.com and the AD automatically created postmaster@mydomain.local as well.

Two questions...

Q1. What is the below abou and do I need to worry about itt?
Requests for Comments (RFC) 2822 defines a reserved address for the postmaster. For more information about RFCs, see http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc.html.

Q2. What groups should the Postmaster account belong to besides domain users?

Thanks,

Clark

ikm7176

1. Depending on your organization's requirements, you may want to change this default assignment to avoid exposure of your administrator account to external users.

Note
Requests for Comments (RFC) 2822 defines a reserved address for the postmaster. For more information about RFCs, see http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc.html.

The above first 2 lines explains you the RFC 2822

2. Postmaster account doesn't need to be a member of any other groups. Its a Domain user with mailbox-enabled which satisfies your requirement for the postmaster@yourdomain.com account to recieve and send NDR's. You dont need to make it a member of any other group unless special privilages are required.

cheers !!

killyman

ASKER

Okay, now I'm a bit confused.

"Depending on your organization's requirements, you may want to change this default assignment to avoid exposure of your administrator account to external users."

I have removed postmaster@mydomain.local from the administrator's ADUC e-mail properties and I have created a user name Postoffice with all the relevent smtp protocols.

Now, do I have to change something else related to RFC 2822 and if so can you help explain how?

Thanks,

Clark

ikm7176

Well, you would be fine with this changes as per my knowledge, I have not read the RFC 2822 completely. You would get more information if you read the entire RFC once.

cheers !

killyman

ASKER

Thanks!

Clark