UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi
Is there any way I can know whether my mail has been delivered successfully or not....?
I am using a shellscript which configures the header and the message body and also includes configurations for attachments. I use 'sendmail' to send the mails....
I have to resend the failed emails after 24 hrs again to my client as a reminder...How do I get to know which emails bounced back ?? and How do I resend them again ?

Thanks
Amruta Pitkar

When they bounce back, you get an email back saying it bounced.

As Corona688 said, the only way is to poll the postmaster mailbox for bounce messages. As mail are sent from a queue and sent asynchronously, your script will only know that it is accepted for delivery by sendmail, that puts the mail into the queue, but it doesn't mean it can be sent. Worse still, if the recipient machine has problems, even though a mail has been received by the receiving server it may not actually deliver the message.

Hi Guys

Thanks.....
But the bounced back email will be stored where? what location ?

Amruta.

You may be able to find it in the mbox file /var/spool/mail/root. I will probably find a library to open the mailboxes if I am to do it, as I don't bother to write these all myself.

Actually, I think your task is just too complex to do by shell scripting. You may consider using a language with more libraries of this kind of libraries available, such as Perl, or Python.

Thanks.....Again.

Amruta

vi $HOME/.forward file as root user.
Add in your email address in the .forward file

You will get the bounced mail