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NAMEsendmail — send mail over the Internet SYNOPSIS/usr/sbin/sendmail
[flags]
[address
...] newaliases mailq DESCRIPTIONsendmail
sends a message to one or more
recipients,
routing the message over whatever networks
are necessary.
sendmail
does internetwork forwarding as necessary
to deliver the message to the correct place. sendmail
is not intended as a user interface routine;
other programs provide user-friendly
front ends;
sendmail
is used only to deliver pre-formatted messages. With no flags,
sendmail
reads its standard input
up to an end-of-file
or 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, e.g.,
if `john' sends to `group',
and `group' includes `john' in the expansion,
then the letter will not be delivered to `john'. Parameters- -Bfile
Set the body type to
type.
Current legal values are 7BIT or 8BITMIME. - -ba
Go 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. - -bd
Run as a daemon.
sendmail
will fork and run in background
listening on socket 25 for incoming
SMTP connections. - -bi
Initialize the alias database. - -bm
Deliver mail in the usual way (default). - -bp
Print a listing of the queue. - -bs
Use the SMTP protocol as described in RFC821
on standard input and output.
This flag implies all the operations of the
ba
flag that are compatible with SMTP. - -bt
Run in address test mode.
This mode reads addresses and shows the steps in parsing;
it is used for debugging configuration tables. - -bv
Verify names only - do not try to collect or deliver a message.
Verify mode is normally used for validating
users or mailing lists. - -Cfile
Use alternate configuration file.
sendmail
refuses to run as root if an alternate configuration file is specified. - -dX
Set debugging value to
X. - -Ffullname
Set the full name of the sender. - -fname
Sets the name of the ``from'' person
(i.e., the sender of the mail).
-f
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. - -hN
Set 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. - -n
Don't do aliasing. - -oxvalue
Set option
x
to the specified
value.
Options are described below. - -pprotocol
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''. - -qtime
Processed saved messages in the queue at given intervals.
If
time
is omitted,
process the queue once.
time
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 timeout to one hour thirty minutes.
If
time
is specified,
sendmail
will run in background.
This option can be used safely with
bd . - -qIsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing
substr
as a substring of the queue id. - -qRsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing
substr
as a substring of one of the recipients. - -qSsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing
substr
as a substring of the sender. - -rname
An alternate and obsolete form of the
f
flag. - -t
Read message for recipients.
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. - -v
Go into verbose mode.
Alias expansions will be announced, etc. - -Xlogfile
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.
OptionsThere are also a number of processing options that may be set.
Normally these will only be used by a system administrator.
Options may be set either on the command line
using the
-o
flag
or in the configuration file.
The options are:
- Afile
Use alternate alias file. - bnblocks
The minimum number of free blocks needed on the spool filesystem. - c
On mailers that are considered ``expensive'' to connect to,
don't initiate immediate connection.
This requires queueing. - CN
Checkpoint the queue file after every
N
successful deliveries (default 10).
This avoids excessive duplicate deliveries
when sending to long mailing lists
interrupted by system crashes. - dx
Set the delivery mode to
x.
Delivery modes are
- i
interactive (synchronous) delivery; - b
background (asynchronous) delivery; - q
queue only; i.e., expect the messages to be delivered
next time the queue is run.
- D
Try to automatically rebuild the alias database
if necessary. - ex
Set error processing to mode
x.
Valid modes are
- m
to mail back the error message, - w
to ``write'' back the error message
(or mail it back if the sender is not logged in), - p
to print the errors on the terminal
(default), - q
to throw away error messages
(only exit status is returned),
and - e
to do special processing for the BerkNet.
If the text of the message is not mailed back
by modes
m
or
w
and if the sender is local to this machine,
a copy of the message is appended to the file
dead.letter
in the sender's home directory. - f
Save UNIX -style
From lines at the front of messages. - G
Match local mail names against the GECOS portion of the password file. - gN
The default group id to use when calling mailers. - Hfile
The SMTP help file. - hN
The maximum number of times a message is allowed to ``hop''
before we decide it is in a loop. - i
Do not take dots on a line by themselves
as a message terminator. - j
Send error messages in MIME format. - Ktimeout
Set connection cache timeout. - kN
Set connection cache size. - Ln
The log level. - l
Pay attention to the Errors-To: header. - m
Send to ``me'' (the sender) also if I am in an alias expansion. - n
Validate the right hand side of aliases during a
newaliases(1M)
command. - o
If set, this message may have
old style headers.
If not set,
this message is guaranteed to have new style headers
(i.e., commas instead of spaces between addresses).
If set, an adaptive algorithm is used that will correctly
determine the header format in most cases. - Qqueuedir
Select the directory in which to queue messages. - Sfile
Save statistics in the named file. - s
Always instantiate the queue file,
even under circumstances where it is not strictly necessary.
This provides safety against system crashes during delivery. - Ttime
Set the timeout on undelivered messages in the queue to the specified time.
After delivery has failed
(e.g., because of a host being down)
for this amount of time,
failed messages will be returned to the sender.
The default is three days. - tstz,dtz
Set the name of the time zone. - Uuserdatabase
If set, a user database is consulted to get forwarding information.
You can consider this an adjunct to the aliasing mechanism,
except that the database is intended to be distributed;
aliases are local to a particular host. - uN
Set the default user id for mailers. - Y
Fork each job during queue runs.
May be convenient on memory-poor machines. - 7
Strip incoming messages to seven bits.
In aliases,
the first character of a name may 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 common alias is: - msgs: "|/usr/bin/msgs -s"
Aliases may 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"
would read
/usr/local/lib/poets.list
for the list of addresses making up the group. sendmail
returns an exit status
describing what it did.
The codes are defined in
<sysexits.h>:
- EX_OK
Successful completion on all addresses. - EX_NOUSER
User name not recognized. - EX_UNAVAILABLE
Catchall meaning necessary resources
were not available. - EX_SYNTAX
Syntax error in address. - EX_SOFTWARE
Internal software error,
including bad arguments. - EX_OSERR
Temporary operating system error,
such as
``cannot fork'' . - EX_NOHOST
Host name not recognized. - EX_TEMPFAIL
Message could not be sent immediately,
but was queued.
If invoked as
newaliases,
sendmail
will rebuild the alias database.
If invoked as
mailq,
sendmail
will print the contents of the mail queue. FILESExcept for the file
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf
itself,
the following pathnames are all specified in
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf.
Thus,
these values are only approximations. - /etc/mail/aliases
raw data for alias names - /etc/mail/aliases.db
data base of alias names - /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
configuration file - /usr/share/lib/sendmail.hf
help file - /var/log/sendmail.st
collected statistics - /var/spool/mqueue/*
temp files - /etc/mail/sendmail.pid
The process id of the daemon - /etc/mail/sendmail.cw
The list of all hostnames that are recognized as
local, which causes sendmail to accept mail for these
hosts and attempt local delivery - /etc/mail/service.switch
The fallback mechanism for hostname and alias lookups
SEE ALSOelm(1),
expand_alias(1),
idlookup(1),
mail(1),
mailq(1),
mailstats(1),
mailx(1),
praliases(1),
convert_awk(1M),
identd(1M),
killsm(1M),
mtail(1M),
newaliases(1M),
smrsh(1M),
aliases(5). HISTORYThe
sendmail
command appeared in
BSD 4.2. This version of HP-UX sendmail was originally based on
sendmail 8.7.1 and includes only minor changes.
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