aliases (SFF)

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(S).

     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  com-
     ments.

     Aliasing occurs only on local names. Loops  can  not  occur,
     since no message will be sent to any person more than once.

     If an alias is found for name, sendmail then checks  for  an
     alias  for owner-name.  If it is found and the result of the
     lookup expands to a  single  address,  the  envelope  sender
     address  of the message is rewritten to that address.  If it
     is found and the result expands to more  than  one  address,
     the envelope sender address is changed to owner-name.

     After aliasing has been done, local and valid recipients who
     have  a  ``.forward'' file in their home directory have mes-
     sages forwarded to the list of users defined in that file.

     This is only the raw data file; the actual aliasing informa-
     tion   is   placed   into   a  binary  format  in  the  file
     /etc/mail/aliases.db using the program  newaliases(ADMN).  A
     newaliases  command should be executed each time the aliases
     file is changed for the change to take effect.

SEE ALSO

newaliases(ADMN),
dbm(NS),
db_open(S),
sendmail(ADMN)

     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(NS) restrict-
     ing a single alias to about 1000 bytes of  information.  You
     can  get  longer  aliases by ``chaining''; that is, make the
     last name in the alias be a dummy name which is a  continua-
     tion alias.

HISTORY

     The aliases file format appeared in 4.0BSD.