Email Aliases

An email alias is an additional address that forwards incoming mail to a destination address. It does not create a separate mailbox — mail sent to the alias lands in the destination account's inbox. Aliases are stored in the mail_aliases table and are reflected in Postfix's virtual_alias_maps.

Aliases vs Groups#

Use an alias when one address should forward to one place. Use a group when one address should deliver to multiple recipients.

Viewing Aliases#

Navigate to Admin → Aliases. The list shows:

Creating an Alias#

1. Click Add Alias.
2. Fill in the form:

3. Click Save Alias.

Common Alias Patterns#

Standard alias (one address → one account)#

info@example.com  →  jane@example.com
noreply@example.com  →  devops@example.com
webmaster@example.com  →  admin@example.com

Useful for role-based addresses where the underlying account owner may change over time.

External forward#

jane@example.com  →  jane.doe@gmail.com

Forwards mail from a hosted address to an external inbox. The destination can be any valid email address, including one outside your server. Note: forwarding to external addresses can affect SPF/DMARC compliance — use SRS (Sender Rewriting Scheme) if your Postfix is configured for it.

Catch-all alias#

*@example.com  →  admin@example.com

Catches any mail addressed to a non-existent address at example.com and delivers it to admin@example.com. Only one catch-all can be active per domain at a time. The catch-all can also be set from the domain edit page in Admin → Domains.

Departmental aliases#

support@example.com  →  helpdesk@example.com
billing@example.com  →  finance@example.com
hr@example.com  →  people@example.com

Editing and Deleting Aliases#

Click the alias address in the list to open the edit view. You can change the destination address. The alias address itself cannot be changed — delete and recreate it if you need a different source address.

To delete: click Delete on the alias detail page and confirm with your admin password. Deletion is immediate and Postfix stops accepting mail for the alias address.

Panel Sync and Aliases#

When Opterius Panel is connected, forwarders created in the Panel (via Panel → Email → Forwarders) are synced to the mail_aliases table automatically by the Panel's Go agent.

Synced aliases show Panel sync in the Source column. You can view but generally should not manually edit synced aliases from within Opterius Mail — changes will be overwritten on the next sync. Manage forwarders from the Panel instead.

Aliases created manually in Opterius Mail (source: Manual) are not pushed to the Panel. They are purely local to the mail server.

Postfix Integration#

Aliases are served to Postfix via the virtual_alias_maps configuration, backed by a MySQL query against the mail_aliases table. The Postfix configuration uses a mysql:/etc/postfix/mysql-virtual-alias-maps.cf map with a query such as:

SELECT destination
FROM mail_aliases
WHERE alias = '%s'
  AND active = 1

For catch-all aliases, a fallback query checks for *@domain:

SELECT destination
FROM mail_aliases
WHERE alias = CONCAT('*@', '%d')
  AND active = 1

Postfix reads the maps dynamically; changes in Opterius Mail take effect without a postfix reload when using MySQL maps. If you are using hash-file based maps, run postmap after changes (the installer sets up MySQL maps by default).

Delivery Order#

When mail arrives for an address, Postfix checks in this order:

1. Local mailbox (exact match in mail_accounts)
2. Alias (exact match in mail_aliases)
3. Catch-all alias (*@domain in mail_aliases)
4. If none match: bounced with "User unknown in virtual mailbox table"

An alias address can shadow an account address — if info@example.com exists both as a mailbox account and as an alias, the mailbox takes precedence.