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Keeping Track

3.5 Setting up mail aliases

The following mail aliases must be added on the machine where the GNATS server is installed. The instructions below are for Sendmail or Sendmail-like mail systems. If these instructions don't fit your system, particularly if you do not have an `aliases' file, ask your mail administrator for advice.

The following aliases should be placed in the file `/etc/aliases'. Yoy may need root access to add these aliases:

• Create an alias for the GNATS administrator. This address should point to the address of the person in charge of administrating GNATS:

  gnats-admin: address

• Create an alias to redirect incoming Problem Reports. This alias should redirect incoming mail via a pipe to the program `queue-pr -q'. For example, if Problem Reports coming to your site are to arrive at the address `bugs@your.company.com', create an alias to the effect of:

  bugs: "| exec-prefix/libexec/gnats/queue-pr -q"

  This places incoming Problem Reports in the `gnats-queue' directory of your database. Remember to fill in the full path of the queue-pr command as appropriate for your installation.

• You may also wish to forward a copy of each incoming Problem Report to a log. This can be accomplished with something like:

  bug-q: "| exec-prefix/libexec/gnats/queue-pr -q" bug-log: /some/path/bugs.log bugs: bug-q, bug-log

  This configuration archives incoming Problem Reports in the file `bug.log', and also feeds them to the program queue-pr. (Remember, `bug.log' needs to be world-writable, and should be pruned regularly; see section GNATS Administration.) In order for the log file to protect fully against data loss in case a disk runs full, try to place it on a different disk volume than the GNATS database.

• If you want your users to be able to query the database by mail, use the following alias:

  query-pr: "| exec-prefix/libexec/gnats/mail-query"

  The mail-query program uses `--restricted' to search on the database, and by default only searches for PRs that aren't closed (see section Querying the database).