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Configure Exchange 2003 to scan for messages from specific senders and forward to a mailbox

We have a lot of e-mail messages that come in from various Unix servers.  Currently, we use sendmail to send these messages to an Exchange 2003 server.  Each messages comes from a variety of machines, the e-mail addresses are user@servername.com

We want all of these messages to go to a single administrators mailbox.  The To: part of the message is not configurable, the messages are sent by various unix jobs.  Sendmail sends the message to our Exchange server via the MX record.

When the messages go out from the Unix boxes, both the To: and From: are user@servername.com.  Is there any way to configure Exchange SMTP to look for messages from specific senders and forward only those messages to a single mailbox on the server?  Similar to a rule that you can set in Outlook Client?  Right now, we would have to create 189 mailboxes for each of the servers and then try to setup forwarding on each box.  This would be an administrative nightmare.

Appreciate any help

Thanks,

Joe

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Sembee
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If you know what the addresses are, why don't you simply put the addresses on to a group? Then you can add and remove who receives the messages as required from one central place. A group can have as many email addresses as you like.

To do something serverside you would have to write an event sink, and that event sink would have to be updated each time you added a recipient. The group method - while a little bit of work up front, once done make the admin very easy.

Simon.
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netwrked

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I guess I am not sure how that would work.  In order to build a group, I would have to create the mailboxes on my exchange server.  I am trying to avoid that.
Why would you have to create the mailboxes?
The Exchange server is not the source of the email, so a mailbox is not required. The Exchange server is receiving the messages. You know what address the messages are being sent to, so you add that email address to a group. Then you set the member of the group to be the account you want the messages sent to.

Simon.
I do not see any way to add the unix mail box names to an exchange group in 2003.  I can create a distro group, but when adding members, it wants either a user, contact, etc.  I see no way to add 189  user@servername.com addresses. Am I looking in the wrong place?
What is sending to who?

Are the messages coming FROM the Unix box or to the Unix box?

If they are coming from the UNIX box, are they being sent to a single address or a unique address?

If they are being sent to 189 different addresses, then you need to add those addresses to the Email Addresses tab of the group that you created.
Then add the recipient as a member.

Simon.
Each cron job on the Unix server sends out an e-mail that via Sendmail (pointing to the MX record) sends an e-mail that looks like:

From:  user@servername.com
To:  user@servername.com
Subject:  Alert

So, there will be user@servername1.com, user@servername2.com, user@server3.com, etc.

There is no user@servername(#).com on the Exchange server.  The To: portion is not configurable on the Unix box, thus my problem.

So, each of the 189 servers will send out multiple alert/status messages which currently just sit in the Exchange queue until they disappear 24 hours later.

I see no way to add non-Exchange addresses to a group.  Any assistance would be appreciated!


What I am struggling with is how you thought that creating 189 mailboxes would help. If the Unix machine is using MX records, how do the messages get to the Exchange server?

From your comment above, it seems like you are trying to add these addresses as members of the group, which is not what I intended at all. The email addresses are on the email addresses tab of the group. The only members are the people who need to receive the mail messages. If you do not see an email addresses tab in the properties of the group then the group is not mail enabled.

Simon.
The numerour mailboxes are by design of the Unix servers and is not configuranle.  Cron jobs send an e-mail to the owner of the cron job.   For instance, if root is the owner, then the e-mail goes to root@servername.com.  Sicne each server has its own name, then each e-mail comes from a unique e-mail address.

The Unix Sendmail program sends out a SMTP broadcast to the network.  Since this is port 25 traffic, the networks sends these messages to the only server accepting port 25 traffic (Unix boxes are configure to send only) which is my Exchange 2003 server.  Since the e-mails do not have a valid recipient, they basically sit in the dead letter queue.

I can create groups all day long and assign an e-mail address to those groups.  I can add all sorts of recipients to those groups.  But, since I cannot change the "To:" portion of the Unix e-mails to point to the group e-mail address, how do I those e-mails to go to the group e-mail address?  Remeber that each e-mail is addressed to the Unix server account that runs the cron job:

To:  user@servername1.com
To:  user@servername2.com
To:  user@servername3.com
.....

If I create a group called Unix Alerts and give it an e-mail address of unixalerts@myexchangeserver.com, how would I get those 189 unique e-mails that are not addressed to unixalerts@myexchange.com to actually go to that mailbox instead of the dead letter queue?


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Sembee
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