An ordinary user with no administrative rights wants all mail delivered to their account forwarded to an external address. Which mechanism is intended for that?
LPIC-1 Exam 102-500, objective 108. Essential system services easy
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The options
Not correct Adding an entry to /etc/aliases in their own name.
Wrong for an unprivileged user. /etc/aliases is a system file writable only by root, and rebuilding it with newaliases also needs privileges.
Not correct Running `mailq -f external@example.com`.
Wrong. mailq displays the outbound mail queue and has nothing to do with forwarding rules.
Correct Creating a ~/.forward file in their home directory containing the destination address.
Correct. A .forward file in the user's own home directory holds one or more destinations, and the MTA honours it at delivery time without any administrator involvement.
Not correct Setting the MAILTO variable in their shell profile.
Wrong. MAILTO is read by cron to decide where a job's output is mailed. It does not redirect a user's incoming mail.
Why
The two forwarding mechanisms map onto the two levels of authority: root edits /etc/aliases and runs newaliases for system-wide aliases, while any user creates ~/.forward for their own mail. A .forward may name addresses, and keeping a local copy as well is done by also listing the user's own name prefixed with a backslash, for example `\alice, alice@example.com`. MTAs ignore a .forward whose ownership or permissions are unsafe, which is a common reason a correct-looking file has no effect.
Where this comes from
- Cited
- LPI exam objective 108.3
- What it says
- Configure e-mail forwarding for a local user.
Practise this
Reading one question is not practice. The trainer will draw a set from objective 108 and space the ones you get wrong.