Mail sent to users that don't read mail?

[Knute Johnson]

Virtual server running Debian 12

sendmail 8.17.1.9
dovecot 2.3.19.1

I've gotten some email to some odd/system users on my server, dovecot,
smmsp, list, www-data and _apt for example. The emails are all spam.
The mail ends up creating a file in /var/mail for that user. Is there a
way to stop those users from accepting mail? Other than just listing
them in the /etc/mail/access file? All of the users have UIDs less than
mine which is 1000. Any way to restrict mail to users with a UID less
than 1000? Or any other suggestions?

[Bjørn Mork]

Post by Knute Johnson
I've gotten some email to some odd/system users on my server, dovecot,
smmsp, list, www-data and _apt for example. The emails are all
spam. The mail ends up creating a file in /var/mail for that user. Is
there a way to stop those users from accepting mail? Other than just
listing them in the /etc/mail/access file? All of the users have UIDs
less than mine which is 1000. Any way to restrict mail to users with
a UID less than 1000? Or any other suggestions?

I usually put system users into /etc/mail/aliases. Along with other
real/virtual accounts which aren't used for direct mailbox access.
Some of these aliases are forwarded to mail reading accounts. Others
are simply redirected to /dev/null. YMMV

You could obviously also do that with a ~/.forward file for the real
users, but my personal preference is to collect this into a single
alias db.



Bjørn

[Claus Aßmann]

Post by Knute Johnson
Is there a
way to stop those users from accepting mail? Other than just listing

Many... aliases, virtusertable, MailboxDatabase, UserDatabaseSpec, ...

Post by Knute Johnson
them in the /etc/mail/access file? All of the users have UIDs less than
mine which is 1000. Any way to restrict mail to users with a UID less
than 1000? Or any other suggestions?

You could write a script to generate that list.

Make sure you have exceptions for system accounts which are aliased
to actual users for various purposes.

[Knute Johnson]

Post by Knute Johnson
Virtual server running Debian 12
sendmail 8.17.1.9
dovecot 2.3.19.1
I've gotten some email to some odd/system users on my server, dovecot,
smmsp, list, www-data and _apt for example.  The emails are all spam.
The mail ends up creating a file in /var/mail for that user.  Is there a
way to stop those users from accepting mail?  Other than just listing
them in the /etc/mail/access file?  All of the users have UIDs less than
mine which is 1000.  Any way to restrict mail to users with a UID less
than 1000?  Or any other suggestions?

Thanks Bjorn an Claus for you answers! Some aliases are probably the
simplest answer for now.