Forwarding Internal Mail on a Linux System

As a linux administrator I utilize cron jobs whenever possible to automate periodic tasks. This is a great tool to handle backups, data pulls, etc but I don’t like that the results of these jobs are locked up in the local account of my system. Luckily, there is an easy way to handle forwarding these messages:

Option 1: Edit the /etc/aliases File

1. Type “sudo vim /etc/aliases”
2. modify or add a line like “root: me@mymail.com” where root is the local username of the account that you want to forward the messages and me@mymail.com is the email account that the messages need to be forwarded to.
3. write and quit that file (“:wq”) and then execute “sudo newaliases” to import the changes into sendmail
4. That’s it!

Option 2: create a ~/.forward file

1. Type “~/.forward” while logged into the account that needs to be forwarded
2. add one email address per line (add a “/” in the first line to retain the messages locally as well as forward)
3. That should be it.

Source: http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/26666/can-i-change-roots-email-address-or-forward-all-mail-to-an-external-address
Source: http://www.feep.net/sendmail/tutorial/intro/aliases.html
Source: http://www.adcs.umn.edu/kb/public/Detail.cfm?ArticleID=2071