I have setuped an Exim4 server on my debian wheezy server. This mail server only sends mail coming from localhost. The purpose is sending mail for my website. I have cron tasks and other services generating mails for root user. These mails are not stored in /var/mail as before, but sent by exim to [email protected]. I try to make exim send mails for root to [email protected] rather than [email protected]. I tried adding a .forward in /root with [email protected] as content. I tried also changing /etc/aliases with root: [email protected]. The fact is that routing works for root@localhost but not for root which is resolved as [email protected] I tested how routing is resolved with exim -bt : root@srv02:~# exim -bt root@localhost R: system_aliases for root@localhost R: dnslookup for [email protected] [email protected] <-- root@localhost router = dnslookup, transport = remote_smtp host gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [173.194.67.27] MX=5 host alt1.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [74.125.143.27] MX=10 host alt2.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [74.125.25.27] MX=20 host alt3.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [173.194.64.27] MX=30 host alt4.gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com [74.125.142.27] MX=40 root@srv02:~# exim -bt root R: dnslookup for [email protected] [email protected] router = dnslookup, transport = remote_smtp host aspmx.l.google.com [173.194.78.27] MX=1 host alt1.aspmx.l.google.com [74.125.143.27] MX=5 host alt2.aspmx.l.google.com [74.125.25.27] MX=5 host alt4.aspmx.l.google.com [74.125.142.27] MX=10 host alt3.aspmx.l.google.com [173.194.64.27] MX=10 I bet this is a matter of how my server is configured (rather than how exim is configured). But to understand well I would like to have a solution for both : how to have root resolved as root@localhost ? how to have [email protected] routed to [email protected] ?