At busy and complex mail sites, many different delivery agents are active. For example, one kind of mail might be routed over the Internet using the TCP delivery agent, while another might be routed via the UUCP suite of programs, and yet another might be routed over a DS3 link to a group of research machines. Under such circumstances, it is useful to gather statistical information about the total use to date of each delivery agent.

The StatusFile option tells sendmail the name of the file into which it should save those statistics. This option does not cause statistics to be gathered. It merely specifies the name of the file where they might be saved. When sendmail runs, it checks for the existence of such a file. If the file exists, it opens and updates the statistics in the file. If the file doesn't exist, sendmail quietly ignores statistics. The statistics can be viewed by using the mailstats(8)^[63] program (Section 5.4.1).

^[63] Whenever you upgrade to a new release of sendmail, be certain to also install the corresponding mailstats program. If you don't, the old mailstats might not be able to read the new statistics file.

The forms of the StatusFile option are as follows:

O StatusFile=path           configuration file (V8.7 and later) 
-OStatusFile=path           command line (V8.7 and later) 
define(`STATUS_FILE',`path')    mc configuration (V8.7 and later) 
OSpath                      configuration file (deprecated) 
-oSpath                     command line (deprecated) 

The optional argument path is of type string. It can be a relative or a full pathname. The default value for path is statistics. Relative names are always relative to the queue directory. If the entire option is missing, the value for path becomes the null string. The default in configuring with the mc technique varies depending on your operating system.

The statistics file must live in a safe directory and must itself have safe permissions. If your site is unable to ensure the safety of this file, you might be able to overcome that limitation (at increased risk) with one of the DontBlameSendmail (DontBlameSendmail) option's items.

The StatusFile option is not safe. If specified from the command line, it can cause sendmail to relinquish its special privileges.