Request for advice (qmail-remote) Part II

[Greg Elliott]

Thankyou to those who have already replied to my first posting.

However, as Charles Cazabon pointed out, I probably should have backed up a
step
to describe exactly what I am trying to achieve; and in doing so see if that
makes the 
advice offered by Arjen van Drie and Dave Sill change in any way.

Okaythe end result I would like to achieve is this:

I want to put in a single machine that acts as a central mail gateway for an
organization. All mail for
every domain related to the organization will initially arrive there and be
farmed out to the various
branch mail servers (each which have one or more individual domains).

Next I would like to offer every user in the organization a mail address
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
(Regardless of where they reside in the organization).

Taking the case where I have 4 users:
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] [Located in the head office...connects directly to
the central mail server]

  [EMAIL PROTECTED]  [Located in branch1...connects to the branch1 mail
server and has an alternate mail
 address [EMAIL PROTECTED]]

  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
  [EMAIL PROTECTED] 
[Located in branch2...connects to the branch2 mail
server and have alternate mail
 addresses [EMAIL PROTECTED]]


For all branch mail users I was planning on creating .qmail files on the
central mail server that forward mail
for <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> through to 

So far so good...that part is easy.

The problem I am trying to resolve is where  mails  at the
address <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
I do not want the mail to be sent back to the central mail server and then
returned to the address
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
Instead I would like the branch mail server to realise that  is a
local user and just deliver the mail to 's
local mail store.

I hope that this outline clarifies exactly what I am trying to achieve, and
doesn't sound too confusing.

Thanks in advance, once again, for any advice anyone can provide.

Regards,
Greg Elliott
E-mail:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]

Request for advice (qmail-remote)

[Greg Elliott]

Greetings All,

I am currently in the planning stages of setting up a moderately
large distributed email system and have run into a little snag
in the way I would like the system to work.

I believe I know how I would like to architect the solution to
the problem; but I am unsure of how to execute the changes and
was wondering if anyone had some advice or ideas on the following:

a) I would like to rename the program qmail-remote to qmail-remote.real
   and insert another program in its place. (Likely to be a shell script).

b) The script would look at the domain of the intended recipient and if 
   it matched maildomain.com (for example) it would then look at the
   username being sent to.
   A small(ish) text file would be kept on the mail server with a list of
   usernames. If the username was found in the list, then the script would
   modify the recipient's email address to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
   and place the message back into the qmail-queue (or qmail-inject if that
   is better).

   If no match is found then the message would be handed onto
qmail-remote.real 
   for normal processing.

   [The effect would be to 'hijack' (for legitimate reasons) mail for a
subset of an 
upstream domain, and deliver it locally. (Attempting to cut down on WAN
traffic)].

Is this possible, and easily achievable?

(I think my biggest problem (related to qmail  :-p ) is my lack of
understanding about 
 how to read the parameters from stdinput in a shell script, manipulate
them,
 and then how to pass control back to qmail-remote.)

Thanks in advance,

Greg Elliott
E-mail:   [EMAIL PROTECTED]