sendmail, newaliases, mailq, smtpd - Sends mail over the
Internet
/usr/sbin/sendmail [options] [address...]
/usr/sbin/newaliases
/usr/sbin/mailq [-v]
/usr/sbin/smtpd
Set the body type to type. The current values are 7BIT or
8BITMIME .. Goes into ARPANET mode. All input lines must
end with a CR-LF, and all messages will be generated with
a CR-LF at the end. Also, the From: and Sender: fields are
examined for the name of the sender. Runs as a daemon.
This requires Berkeley Interprocess Communications (IPC).
The sendmail command will fork and run in the background,
listening on the socket specified in the /etc/services
file for incoming SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol)
connections. This is normally run when going to multiuser
mode.
Using this option is equivalent to invoking sendmail
as smtpd. Initializes the alias database.
This is the same as invoking the newaliases command.
Delivers mail in the usual way (default).
Prints a listing of the queue. This is the same as
invoking the mailq command. Use the SMTP protocol
as described in RFC821 on standard input and output.
This option implies all the operations of the
-ba option that are compatible with SMTP. Runs in
address test mode. This mode reads addresses and
shows the steps in parsing; it is used for debugging
configuration tables. Verifies names only.
Does not try to collect or deliver a message. Verify
mode is normally used for validating users or
mailing lists. Uses alternate configuration file.
The sendmail command refuses to run as root if an
alternate configuration file is specified. Sets
debugging value to X. A useful value is 21.n, where
n is any nonzero integer less than 100. This produces
information regarding address parsing and is
typically used with the -bt option. Higher values
of n produce more verbose information. Sets the
full name of the sender. Sets the name of the
From: user field (that is, the sender of the mail).
The -f option can only be used by trusted users
(normally root, daemon, and network) or if the person
you are trying to become is the same as the
person you are. Sets the hop count to N. The hop
count is incremented every time the mail is processed.
When it reaches a limit, the mail is
returned with an error message, the victim of an
aliasing loop. If not specified, Received lines in
the message are counted. The maximum hop count is
configurable, but defaults to 30 if you do not configure
an alternate value. The default value is
acceptable in most installations but you may want
to increase the value if too many messages are
being lost Defines Macro to have Value. This option
is normally used only from the sendmail daemon command
line. Does not do aliasing or forwarding.
Sets option to the specified value. This form uses
long names. Processing options specified with -O
are described in the Sendmail Installation and
Operation Guide on the Documentation CD-ROM. Sets
option X to the specified value. Processing
options specified with -o are described in the
Sendmail Processing Options section later in this
reference page. Set the name of the protocol used
to receive the message. This can be a simple protocol
name such as UUCP or a protocol and hostname,
such as UUCP:ucbvax. Processes saved messages in
the queue at given intervals. If time is omitted,
processes the queue once. The time command is given
as a tagged number, with s being seconds, m being
minutes, h being hours, d being days, and w being
weeks. For example, -q1h30m or -q90m would both
set the time-out to 1 hour and 30 minutes. If the
time command is specified, the sendmail command
will run in background mode. This option can be
used safely with -bd. Limit processed jobs to
those containing substr as a substring of the queue
ID. Limit processed jobs to those containing substr
as a substring of one of the recipients. Limit
processed jobs to those containing substr as a substring
of the sender. An alternate and obsolete
form of the -f option. Reads a message for recipients.
The To:, Cc:, and Bcc: lines will be scanned
for recipient addresses. The Bcc: line will be
deleted before transmission. Any addresses in the
argument list will be suppressed; that is, they
will not receive copies even if listed in the message
header. Goes into verbose mode. Alias expansions
will be announced, and so forth. Log all
traffic in and out of mailers in the indicated log
file. This should only be used as a last resort for
debugging mailer bugs. It will log a lot of data
very quickly.
Specifes the mail recipient. You can specify more than one
address.
The sendmail command sends a message to one or more recipients,
routing the message over whatever networks are necessary.
The sendmail command does internetwork forwarding
as necessary to deliver the message to the correct place.
The sendmail command is not intended as a user interface
routine. Other programs provide user-friendly front ends;
sendmail is used only to deliver preformatted messages.
With no options, sendmail reads its standard input up to
an End-of-File or to a line consisting only of a single
(dot), and sends a copy of the message found there to all
of the addresses listed. It determines the network(s) to
use based on the syntax and contents of the addresses.
Local addresses are looked up in a file and aliased appropriately.
Aliasing can be prevented by preceding the
address with a backslash (\). Normally the sender is not
included in any alias expansions; for example, if john
sends to group, and group includes john in the expansion,
then the letter will not be delivered to john.
For additional information on mail, see the sendmail book
by O'Reilly & Associates and the Sendmail Installation and
Operation Guide on the Documentation CD-ROM.
Sendmail Processing Options [Toc] [Back]
There are a number of optional sendmail processing options
that can be set. Normally, these will be used only by a
system administrator. They can be set either on the command
line using the -o option or in the configuration
file. (Refer to the sendmail.cf(4) reference page for
details on the sendmail.cf file.)
Note
The following partial list is limited to those options
that are likely to be useful on the command line. For a
complete listing, see the Sendmail Installation and Operation
Guide.
Full pathname to the alias file. The minimum number of
free blocks (bminblocks) needed on the spool filesystem.
Sets the blank substitution character to the character
specified in the Character argument. The sendmail daemon
replaces unquoted spaces in addresses with Character. The
supplied configuration file uses a period (.) for Character.
Causes sendmail to queue messages for that mailer
daemon without sending them if an outgoing mailer is
marked as expensive to use. The queue can be run when
costs are lower or when the queue is large enough to send
the message efficiently. Sets the delivery mode to x.
Delivery modes are i for interactive (synchronous) delivery,
b for background (asynchronous) delivery, and q for
queue only (that is, actual delivery is done the next time
the queue is run). Tries to automatically rebuild the
alias database if necessary. Sets error processing to
mode x. Valid modes are the following: Mails the error
message to the user's mailbox, but always exits with a 0
(zero) exit status (normal return). Mails the error message
to the user's mailbox. Displays the error message on
the terminal (default). Throws away the error message and
returns the exit status only. Writes the error message to
the terminal or mails it if the user is not logged in.
If the text of the message is not mailed by modes m
or w and if the sender is a local user, a copy of
the message is appended to the dead.letter file in
the sender's home directory. The mode to use when
creating temporary files. Saves UNIX compatible
style From: lines at the front of messages.
Enables GECOS fuzzy-logic name matching.
The GECOS field is a field in the /etc/passwd file
that usually contains the user's full name. You
can modify this information by using the chfn routine.
If sendmail does not find an exact match for
the user name, the Match-GECOS option tries to
match the user name against names in the
/etc/passwd file.
For example, if user Jane Q. Public's user name is
jpq, she will receive mail sent to jane if she is
the only Jane in the /etc/passwd file. Likewise,
if John Doe's username is jd, he will receive mail
sent to doe if he is the only Doe in the
/etc/passwd file.
The sendmail Version 8 command and previous versions
of sendmail differ in how they process GECOS
information. If the GECOS option is enabled, sendmail
Version 8 is very stringent; it requires a
match on the entire name. For instance, if the
GECOS field for user jd is "John Doe", then sendmail
Version 8 will only work for mail sent to john
doe. An older version of sendmail may work with
john doe, john, or doe assuming that this is the
only john (or the only doe) in the file. The
default group ID to use when calling mailers. The
SMTP help file. Specifies the maximum hop count.
The maximum hop count option specifies the maximum
number of machines that a mail message can be sent
to before it is rejected. This limit is used to
help prevent infinite mail loops. The default is
30. Depending on the size of your mail system, you
may require a higher or lower minimum hop count.
Does not interpret a . (dot) on a line by itself as
a message terminator. Removes the excess dot
inserted by a remote mailer at the beginning of a
line if mail is received through SMTP. In addition,
if receiving mail through SMTP, any dot at the
front of a line followed by another dot is removed.
This is the opposite of the action performed by the
X mailer option. Indicate that sendmail should use
the Internet domain name server if it can. Send
error messages in Multipurpose Internet Mail Extension
(MIME) format. Set connection cache time out.
Set connection cache size. Specifies the log level
to be the value supplied in the number argument.
Each number includes the activities of all numbers
of lesser value and adds the activity that it represents.
Valid levels and the activities that they
represent are as follows: Prevents logging. Logs
major problems only. Logs message collections and
failed deliveries. Logs successful deliveries.
Logs messages deferred (for example, because the
host is down). Logs messages that are placed in
the queue (normal event). Logs unusual but benign
incidents (for example, trying to process a locked
file). Logs the internal queue ID to external message
ID mappings (the default). This can be useful
for tracing a message as it travels between several
hosts. Logs messages that are of interest when
debugging. Logs verbose information regarding the
queue. If the sender uses an alias, and that
sender is a member of the group named by the alias,
then also send to the sender. Validates the righthand
side of alias rewrite rules when the sendmail
daemon performs the newaliases function. If set,
this message may have old style headers. If not
set, this message is guaranteed to have new style
headers (that is, commas instead of spaces between
addresses). If set, an adaptive algorithm is used
that will correctly determine the header format in
most cases. Identifies the person who is to
receive a copy of all returned mail. Selects the
directory in which to queue messages. The directory
will be created if it does not exist. The time-out
on reads. If none is set, sendmail will wait
forever for a mailer. This option violates the word
(if not the intent) of the SMTP specification, so
the time-out should probably be fairly large.
The sendmail Version 8 command has additional finegrained
control of timeouts. See the Sendmail
Installation and Operation Guide on the Documentation
CD-ROM for additional information. Saves
statistics in the named file. Statistics are only
collected if the file exists. This file must be
created by the user. The recommended path for this
is /var/adm/sendmail/sendmail.st. Statistics can
be printed out using /usr/sbin/mailstats. Always
instantiates the queue file, even under circumstances
where it is not strictly necessary. This
provides safety against system crashes during
delivery. Sets the time-out on undelivered messages
in the queue to the specified time. After
delivery has failed (for example, because of a host
being down) for this amount of time, failed messages
will be returned to the sender. The default
in the configuration file is 3 days. Sets the name
of the time zone. Sets the default user ID for
mailers. Runs in verbose mode. The sendmail daemon
delivers each message in the mail queue from a
separate process. This option is not required; it
can increase system overhead in this environment.
Aliases Interpretation [Toc] [Back]
In aliases, the first character of a name can be a vertical
bar to cause interpretation of the rest of the name as
a command to pipe the mail to. It may be necessary to
quote the name to keep sendmail from suppressing the
blanks from between arguments. For example, a file can
contain a common alias such as:
msgs: "|/usr/bin/msgs -s"
Aliases can also have the syntax :include:filename to ask
sendmail to read the named file for a list of recipients.
For example, an alias such as:
poets: :include:/usr/local/lib/poets.list
reads /usr/local/lib/poets.list for the list of addresses
making up the group.
You can also use the Network Information Service (NIS) to
distribute your aliases to other systems.
Exit Status [Toc] [Back]
The sendmail command returns an exit status describing
what it did. The codes are defined in <sysexits.h>: Successful
completion on all addresses. The username was not
recognized. A catchall meaning necessary resources were
not available. There is a syntax error in the address.
There is an internal software error, including bad arguments.
There is a temporary operating system error, such
as cannot fork. The hostname was not recognized. The
message could not be sent immediately, but was queued.
Links to sendmail [Toc] [Back]
Three additional commands are links to sendmail: Prints
the contents of the mail queue. This command is the same
as running sendmail with the -bp option. Builds a new
copy of the alias database from the /var/adm/sendmail/aliases
file. This command is the same as running
sendmail with the -bi option. Runs sendmail as a daemon.
This command is equivalent to invoking sendmail with the
-bd option.
Mail Addresses [Toc] [Back]
Mail addresses are based on the domain address (Internet)
protocol. These addresses have the form: user@host.domain
Note that the configuration file provided with sendmail
specifies that blanks in addresses be converted to dots
before being transmitted. This convention follows the
Internet mail protocol described in RFC822, but does not
match the Internet mail protocol described in RFC733
(NIC41952). You can change this setting by setting the OB
option in the sendmail configuration file (see the sendmail.cf(4) reference page). A domain is a logical grouping
of systems that are connected together by physical
network links. No direct relationship exists between the
actual physical interconnections and the way in which the
systems are grouped in the domain. The domain name identifies
a specific domain within a larger group of domains.
The domain name has the format of a tree structure. Each
node (or leaf) on the tree corresponds to a resource set,
and each node can create and contain new domains below it.
The actual domain name of a node is the path from the root
of the tree to that node.
For example, if node hera is part of the domain OSF, which
is in turn a subdomain of ORG, a message sent to user geo
at that address, uses this format:
geo@hera.OSF.ORG
The message router (usually sendmail) must determine how
to send the message to its final destination. If the
router is at hera, it delivers the message to user geo.
If the router is at another system within the OSF domain,
it corresponds with the name server for that domain to
find out how to deliver the message. If the router is not
a part of the OSF domain but is in a domain that is under
the ORG domain, it corresponds with the name server for
the ORG domain to find out how to deliver the message. The
respective name server returns a network address to the
router. That network address determines the actual path
that the message takes to its destination.
The domain address is read from right to left, with each
domain in the address separated from the next domain by a
(dot). This format does not imply any routing. Thus,
although the example is specified as an ORG address, the
message might actually travel by a different route if that
were more convenient or efficient. At one site, the message
associated with the sample address goes directly from
the sender to node hera over a local area network. At
another site, it might be sent over a UUCP network or a
combination of other delivery methods.
Normally, the actual routing of a message is handled automatically.
However, you can route the message manually
through several specified hosts to get it to its final
destination. An address using intermediate hosts, called a
route address, has the following form:
@hosta,@hostb:user@hostc
Explicitly specifying the message routing with these route
addresses, while supported, is strongly discouraged by RFC
1123. Instead, allow the mail software (for example sendmail)
to handle routing issues.
This address specifies that the message goes first to the
remote system represented by hosta, then to the remote
system represented by hostb, and finally to the remote
system represented by hostc. This path is forced even if
there is a more efficient route to hostc.
In some cases you may abbreviate the address rather than
entering the entire domain name. In general, systems in
the same domain do not need to use the full domain name.
For example, a user on node zeus.XYZ.COM can send a message
to geo@hera.XYZ.COM by entering only geo@hera because
they are in the same local domain, XYZ.COM.
Other mail address formats exist and the mail routing program
(sendmail) converts most of these other formats to a
format that the network routing system can use. However,
if you use the domain address format, the routing program
operates more efficiently.
For example, if sendmail receives an address in the following
format:
@host:user
it converts it to the corresponding domain address format:
user@host
Similarly, if sendmail receives an address in the following
format: host!user
the mail routing program routes the message directly to
the uucp command. However, when sending mail via uucp,
you must include a route address that indicates which UUCP
host(s) to send the message through to get to the final
destination.
To route messages through the UUCP network, use one of the
following domain address formats. Your choice depends on
the way in which the systems at your site are connected:
@system_name.domain_name:uucp-route!user-ID
For example, the address: @zeus:hera!amy
sends a message to user amy on UUCP host hera by
way of system zeus. The address: @apollo.802:merlin!lgh
sends a message to user lgh on UUCP host merlin via
system apollo under the local domain 802. uucproute:!user-ID@system_name.domain_name
In this case, the address: merlin!arthur!amy@hera.802
sends a message to user amy on system hera under
domain 802 via the UUCP link merlin through arthur.
system_name.domain_name:uucp-route:!user-ID@system_namedomain_name
In this example, the address: @apollo.802:merlin!arthur!amy@hera.802
sends a message to user amy on system hera under
domain 802 that first goes through apollo, the
gateway node for domain 802, and then through the
UUCP link merlin through arthur. (Including 802 in
this example is optional because the two domain
names are identical.) hosta!hostb!hostc!user
This example is a purely UUCP route address.
zeus!hera!kronos!amy
sends a message to amy on kronos via the UUCP link
zeus through hera.
@hosta.UUCP:@hostb.UUCP:user@hostc
This example, like the previous one, is a purely
UUCP route address. @zeus.UUCP:@hera.UUCP:amy@kronos.UUCP
sends a message to amy on kronos via the UUCP link
zeus through hera.
Your host may also be configured to handle DECnet
addresses. Under DECnet Phase IV, an address is of
the form nodename::username
This is typically converted into a domain-style
form, such as user@nodename.dnet.parent-domain
(parent-domain is something such as compaq.com or
OSF.ORG that uniquely identifies your company).
Similarly, your host may also handle Phase V type
addresses, such as joe@dec:.nyc.mars.
By default, the Tru64 UNIX sendmail software uses message
encoding that uses 8 bits of each byte. Although 8-bit
encoding better supports the full range of characters in
many non-English languages, 8-bit encoding is not generally
recommended because it violates the SMTP protocol
used for mail transmission over a TCP/IP network.
Specifies the command path. The configuration file. The
raw data for alias names. Sets the option variable A to
the full pathname of the aliases file (/var/adm/sendmail/aliases).
This file and the aliases.dir file comprise
the database of alias names. This file and the
aliases.pag file comprise the database of alias names.
This file specifies the users who should receive mail on
the local host.
This option is not supported in Tru64 UNIX. The
help file. The collected statistics. The mail
queue directory.
Except for /usr/sbin/sendmail and /var/adm/sendmail.cf,
the previous pathnames are all specified in the
/var/adm/sendmail.cf file, so they may vary on your system.
The process id of the daemon.
Commands: mail(1), mailx(1), rc0(8)
Functions: syslog(3)
Files: aliases(4), forward(4), sendmail.cf(4)
Specifications: RFC819, RFC821, RFC822
Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide
sendmail, Bryan Costales with Eric Allman, O'Reilly &
Associates, Inc.
sendmail(8)
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