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["XMail"] uses virtual domains. During debconf initial configuration the user is asked an default domain. That domain is used.

In the future /etc/mailname can be used as a default domain if so is decided here.
 

/etc/mailname

The File /etc/mailname is used by the MTA packages to determine - what? Unfortunately, there is no clearly defined policy, and different !["MTAs"] seem to do it differently. This page has been created in the hope that it can be used to document which MTA does it which way, and to reach consensus so that all !["MTAs"] can converge.

For the rest of this document mailname will mean the contents of the file /etc/mailname which is a single line with a fully qualified domain name inside.

What does /etc/mailname do?

[http://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-customized-programs.html#s-mail-transport-agents Policy] talks about mailname being "hostname to use on outgoing news and mail messages". This seems to suggest it is supposed to be used for qualifying the From (envelope and header) and using it to qualify recipients does not seem to be supported by policy.

However there is also need for something to qualify recipients. A mail sent with:

 To: pkg-exim4-users@lists.alioth.debian.org
 Cc: ametzler

should go out with

 To: pkg-exim4-users@lists.alioth.debian.org
 Cc: ametzler@<some sane value>

MTA list (by source package name)

Maintainers, please comment here what your package does with /etc/mailname. Please note that were are addressing the sid/unstable version of your package here.

What we would like to know is whether the message generated by

 echo foo || sendmail bar

will end up at

 foo@<contents of /etc/mailname> (option A)

or at

 foo@<local fqdn> (option B)

exim4

See the following bug reports for the problems that we currently have:

Failing to come up with something better exim4 (and mutt) use mailname to qualify recipients and therefore exim4 makes mailname a local domain. If people don't want that, they delete it from the list in the debconf dialog.

mailname is not implicitely made a local domain. It is listed explicitely in dc_other_hostnames, where users can easily remove it from in the Debconf dialog. When upgrading existing installations mailname is automatically added once to dc_other_hostnames. On fresh installations mailname is the default value of dc_other_hostnames.

If the visible, rewritten domain name for local users is a local domain (which is the case when it is also the mailname), a special router takes care that the smarthost still works.

courier

esmtp

exim

masqmail

nullmailer

postfix

The exim 4 team observes that postfix behaves basicaly identically to exim4. It makes mailname local by default. If people don't want that, they delete it from the list in the debconf dialog.

John Goerzen has said in [http://bugs.debian.org/280207 #280207] that postfix chooses option A.

sendmail

smail

ssmtp

xmail

["XMail"] uses virtual domains. During debconf initial configuration the user is asked an default domain. That domain is used.

In the future /etc/mailname can be used as a default domain if so is decided here.

zmailer

zmailer-ssl