sendmail not finding alias

[Ron Stanonik]

We're running sun4s with sunos 4.0.1.

We're trying to use the yp map mail.aliases (made from /etc/aliases on the
master); ie, yp clients have an almost empty /etc/aliases (postmaster,
mailer-daemon, etc), getting most aliases from the yp map.

We have some aliases that are failing.  Here's an example:

	boss:boss-user at coral, sec
	boss-user:\boss

The purpose of this is that the secretary should receive copies of any
message to the boss.

(Aside: Why not simply

	boss:boss at coral, sec

Because the sec will get two copies, one from the machine originating the
message when it expands the alias, and one from the receiving machine
(coral in this case) when it expands the alias.  Why not

	boss:\boss at coral, sec

The \ doesn't get sent from machine to machine, so boss still get's
expanded on the receiving machine; ie, sec still gets two copies.)

The problem is that when sending to boss from coral (where boss's account
is), one gets the error "boss-user at coral unknown".  Oddly, sending to
boss-user is okay.  Adding

boss-user:\boss

to /etc/aliases on coral also fixes the problem.

It's as though sendmail stops checking the yp aliases (though it continues
checking /etc/aliases) after encountering an alias that expands to the
local machine; ie, boss expands to boss-user at coral, so it only checks
/etc/aliases for boss-user.

Not having sources, I have no fix.  Just be warned.

Ron Stanonik
stanonik at nprdc.navy.mil