ALIASES(5)ALIASES(5)NAME
aliases - aliases file for sendmail
SYNOPSIS
aliases
DESCRIPTION
This file describes user ID aliases used by sendmail. The
file resides in /etc/mail and is formatted as a series of
lines of the form
name: addr_1, addr_2, addr_3, . . .
The name is the name to alias, and the addr_n are the
aliases for that name. addr_n can be another alias, a
local username, a local filename, a command, an include
file, or an external address.
Local Username
username
The username must be available via getpwnam(3).
Local Filename
/path/name
Messages are appended to the file specified by the
full pathname (starting with a slash (/))
Command
|command
A command starts with a pipe symbol (|), it
receives messages via standard input.
Include File
:include: /path/name
The aliases in pathname are added to the aliases
for name.
E-Mail Address
user@domain
An e-mail address in RFC 822 format.
Lines beginning with white space are continuation lines.
Another way to continue lines is by placing a backslash
directly before a newline. Lines beginning with # are
comments.
Aliasing occurs only on local names. Loops can not occur,
since no message will be sent to any person more than
once.
$Date: 2000/12/14 23:08:15 $ 1
ALIASES(5)ALIASES(5)
After aliasing has been done, local and valid recipients
who have a ``.forward'' file in their home directory have
messages forwarded to the list of users defined in that
file.
This is only the raw data file; the actual aliasing infor-
mation is placed into a binary format in the file
/etc/mail/aliases.db using the program newaliases(1). A
newaliases command should be executed each time the
aliases file is changed for the change to take effect.
SEE ALSOnewaliases(1), dbm(3), dbopen(3), db_open(3), sendmail(8)
SENDMAIL Installation and Operation Guide.
SENDMAIL An Internetwork Mail Router.
BUGS
If you have compiled sendmail with DBM support instead of
NEWDB, you may have encountered problems in dbm(3)
restricting a single alias to about 1000 bytes of informa-
tion. You can get longer aliases by ``chaining''; that
is, make the last name in the alias be a dummy name which
is a continuation alias.
HISTORY
The aliases file format appeared in 4.0BSD.
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