Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide
SMM:08-101
-L tag
Sets the identifier used for syslog. Note that this identifier is set as early as possible.
However, sendmail may be used if problems arise before the command line arguments are
processed.
-n
Don't do aliasing or forwarding.
-N notifications Tag all addresses being sent as wanting the indicated notifications, which consists of the
word "NEVER" or a comma-separated list of "SUCCESS", "FAILURE", and "DELAY"
for successful delivery, failure, and a message that is stuck in a queue somewhere. The
default is "FAILURE,DELAY".
-r addr
An obsolete form of -f.
-ox value
Set option x to the specified value. These options are described in Section 5.6.
-Ooption=value Set option to the specified value (for long form option names). These options are
described in Section 5.6.
-Mx value
Set macro x to the specified value.
-pprotocol
Set the sending protocol. Programs are encouraged to set this. The protocol field can be
in the form protocol:host to set both the sending protocol and sending host. For example,
"-pUUCP:uunet" sets the sending protocol to UUCP and the sending host to uunet.
(Some existing programs use -oM to set the r and s macros; this is equivalent to using
-p.)
-qtime
Try to process the queued up mail. If the time is given, a sendmail will start one or more
processes to run through the queue(s) at the specified time interval to deliver queued mail;
otherwise, it only runs once. Each of these processes acts on a workgroup. These pro-
cesses are also known as workgroup processes or WGP's for short. Each workgroup is
responsible for controlling the processing of one or more queues; workgroups help man-
age the use of system resources by sendmail. Each workgroup may have one or more
children concurrently processing queues depending on the setting of MaxQueueChildren.
-qptime
Similar to -q with a time argument, except that instead of periodically starting WGP's
sendmail starts persistent WGP's that alternate between processing queues and sleeping.
The sleep time is specified by the time argument; it defaults to 1 second, except that a
WGP always sleeps at least 5 seconds if their queues were empty in the previous run.
Persistent processes are managed by a queue control process (QCP). The QCP is the par-
ent process of the WGP's. Typically the QCP will be the sendmail daemon (when started
with -bd or -bD) or a special process (named Queue control) (when started without -bd
or -bD). If a persistent WGP ceases to be active for some reason another WGP will be
started by the QCP for the same workgroup in most cases. When a persistent WGP has
core dumped, the debug flag no_persistent_restart is set or the specific persistent WGP
has been restarted too many times already then the WGP will not be started again and a
message will be logged to this effect. To stop (SIGTERM) or restart (SIGHUP) persis-
tent WGP's the appropriate signal should be sent to the QCP. The QCP will propagate the
signal to all of the WGP's and if appropriate restart the persistent WGP's.
-qGname
Run the jobs in the queue group name once.
-q[!]Xstring
Run the queue once, limiting the jobs to those matching Xstring. The key letter X can be
I
to limit based on queue identifier, R to limit based on recipient, S to limit based on
sender, or Q to limit based on quarantine reason for quarantined jobs. A particular
queued job is accepted if one of the corresponding attributes contains the indicated string.
The optional ! character negates the condition tested. Multiple -qX flags are permitted,
with items with the same key letter "or'ed" together, and items with different key letters
"and'ed" together.
-Q[reason]
Quarantine a normal queue items with the given reason or unquarantine quarantined
queue items if no reason is given. This should only be used with some sort of item