APPENDIX C
SUMMARY OF SUPPORT FILES
This is a summary of the support files that sendmail creates or generates. Many of these can be
changed by editing the sendmail.cf file; check there to find the actual pathnames.
/usr/sbin/sendmail
The binary of sendmail.
/usr/bin/newaliases
A link to /usr/sbin/sendmail; causes the alias database to be rebuilt. Running this pro-
gram is completely equivalent to giving sendmail the -bi flag.
/usr/bin/mailq
Prints a listing of the mail queue. This program is equivalent to using the -bp flag to
sendmail.
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf
The configuration file, in textual form.
/etc/mail/helpfile The SMTP help file.
/etc/mail/statistics
A statistics file; need not be present.
/etc/mail/sendmail.pid
Created in daemon mode; it contains the process id of the current SMTP daemon. If you
use this in scripts; use ``head -1'' to get just the first line; the second line contains the
command line used to invoke the daemon, and later versions of sendmail may add more
information to subsequent lines.
/etc/mail/aliases The textual version of the alias file.
/etc/mail/aliases.db
The alias file in hash (3) format.
/etc/mail/aliases.{pag,dir}
The alias file in ndbm (3) format.
/var/spool/mqueue
The directory in which the mail queue(s) and temporary files reside.
/var/spool/mqueue/qf*
Control (queue) files for messages.
/var/spool/mqueue/df*
Data files.
/var/spool/mqueue/tf*
Temporary versions of the qf files, used during queue file rebuild.
/var/spool/mqueue/xf*
A transcript of the current session.
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Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide