Answer
An unknown user is a user not known on a particular machine. GMS provides a range of options for dealing with mail addressed to unknown users. These include
- Reject the mail
Simply reject any mail addressed to unknown users at the SMTP protocol stage. This is the most efficient setting. - Direct the mail to another server
Frequently used in situations where the server is acting as a Firewall to protect other internal mail servers, i.e. No users exist on the GMS server, they are all passed on to an internal server.It is also used where only a selection of users are run on a separate server.
- Direct the mail to a specified account
Useful where one person is responsible for handling all the mail arriving on the server not addressed to a particular user (or rather where the user it is addressed to does not exist on the server). The message that is transferred is not processed in anyway, it is simply redirected to the specified account. - Fail the mail to a specified account
Normally used where mail to unknown users is not likely to be processed, however you may want to collect it just to ensure that you do get copies of messages where for example, the user name it has been sent to has been mis-spelled. The message that is delivered to the specified account is a fully compliant MIME error message which contains details of the error and the actual message that could not be delivered.
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Keywords:unknown user action load sharing