aliases(5)

NAME

aliases — aliases file for sendmail

SYNOPSIS

/etc/mail/aliases

DESCRIPTION

The newaliases command (which is the same as sendmail -bi; see sendmail(1M)) builds the sendmail alias database from a text file. The default text file is /etc/mail/aliases. Local addresses (local user names) are looked up in the alias database and expanded as necessary, unless the user name is preceded by a backslash (\). When the aliases file contains multiple entries for a given alias, only the last entry is used. Except when the m processing option (the send to me option) is set in the sendmail command or in the configuration file, /etc/mail/sendmail.cf, the sender is not included in any alias expansions. For example, if joe sends a message to group, and the expansion of group includes joe, the message is not delivered to joe.

Each line of the alias text file must be of the form:

alias : mailing-list

Mailing lists can be continued onto multiple lines. Each continuation line must begin with white space. Lines beginning with # are comments.

A mailing-list is a comma-separated list of one or more of the following:

user-name

Local user names occurring in alias expansions will themselves be looked up in the alias database unless they are preceded by backslash (\).

remote-address

The remote address syntax understood by sendmail is configured in the sendmail configuration file, and typically includes the RFC-822-style user@domain and the UUCP-style host!user.

filename

This must be an absolute path name. sendmail appends a message to the file only if the directory in which it resides is readable and searchable by all, and only if the file already exists, is not executable, and is writable by all.

| command-line

sendmail pipes the message as standard input to the specified command. If command-line contains blanks, it must be enclosed in quotation marks (" ). For example,

msgs: "|/usr/bin/msgs -s"

:include:filename

sendmail reads filename for a list of recipient addresses and forwards the message to each. For example, an alias such as:

poets: ":include:/usr/local/lib/poets.list"

would read /usr/local/lib/poets.list for the list of addresses making up the group.

If a file named .forward exists in a user's home directory and is owned by the user, sendmail redirects mail for that user to the list of addresses in the .forward file.

An address in a .forward or :include: file can be anything that can appear as a mailing-list in the alias text file.

sendmail can run programs or write to files using .forward file. This is controlled by the /etc/shells file. If the owner of the .forward file lacks a valid shell as listed in /etc/shells file, the execution of such programs will be disallowed. The user can still execute such programs by placing the special string /SENDMAIL/ANY/SHELL/ in the /etc/shells file.

The alias database is examined before a recipient's .forward file is examined. After aliasing has been done, local and valid recipients who have a .forward file in their home directory will have messages forwarded to the list of users defined in that file.

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

Aliases defined in /etc/mail/aliases will NOT be expanded in headers from mailx (see mailx(1)), but WILL be visible over networks and in headers from rmail (see mail(1)).

/etc/mail/aliases is only the raw data file. The actual aliasing information is placed into a binary format in the file /etc/mail/aliases.db using newaliases (see newaliases(1M)).

A newaliases command should be executed each time the aliases file is changed in order for the change to take effect. Note that the NIS alias maps are generated by ypmake using makemap, which leaves aliases.pag and aliases.dir in the /etc/mail directory.

AUTHOR

aliases was developed by the University of California, Berkeley, and originally appeared in 4.0BSD.

FILES

$HOME/.forward: User's mail forwarding file
/etc/mail/aliases: raw data file for alias names
/etc/mail/aliases.db: database of alias names

aliases(5)

Technical documentation

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