Exim: Email to root ignores /etc/aliases and /root/.forward - always used qualifies domain name

Your host doesn't sufficiently know that it is supposed to be qualified.example.com. A local delivery to root is rewritten as [email protected], which is (wrongly) considered to be elsewhere, so an off-host delivery is attempted.

You need to complete the process telling exim4 that your local host really is qualified.example.com. Then, when it delivers to root, rewritten as [email protected] it will consider this as local delivery. It will then check the /etc/aliases file and perform off-host delivery to [email protected] per your instructions.

Let's assume your host's real DNS name is myhost.contoso.com. Rerun dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config and include these settings:

• System mail name: myhost.contoso.com
• Other destinations for which [local] mail is accepted: myhost : qualified.example.com
• Domains to relay mail for: {empty}
• Machines to relay mail for: {empty}

Then run update-exim4.conf and invoke-rc.d exim4 restart