NAME

       vacation — return “I am not here” indication

SYNOPSIS

       vacation -i [-r interval]
       vacation -l
       vacation -x
       vacation [-a alias] [-c ccaddr] [-d] [-f db] [-m msg] [-j] [-z] login

DESCRIPTION

       vacation  returns  a  message  to the sender of a message telling them that you are currently not reading
       your mail.  The intended use is in a .forward file.  For example, your .forward file might have:

             \eric, "|/usr/bin/vacation -a allman eric"

       which would send messages to you (assuming your login name was eric) and reply to any messages for “eric”
       or “allman”.

       Available options:

       -a alias
               Handle messages for alias in the same manner as those received for the user's login  name.  Using
               -a alias multiple times is possible.

       -c ccaddr
               Copy the vacation messages to ccaddr.

       -d      Print messages to stderr instead of syslog.

       -f db   Uses db as the database file.

       -m msg  Uses msg as the message file.

       -j      Reply  to  the  message  even if our address cannot be found in the “To:” or “Cc:” headers.  This
               option is very dangerous and should be used with extreme care.

       -z      Set the envelope sender of the reply message to “<>”.

       -i      Initialize the vacation database files.  It should be used before you modify your .forward file.

       -r      Set the reply interval to interval days.  The default is one week.  An interval of “0” means that
               a reply is sent to each message,  and  an  interval  of  “infinite”  (actually,  any  non-numeric
               character)  will  never  send  more than one reply.  It should be noted that intervals of “0” are
               quite dangerous, as it allows mailers to get into “I am on vacation” loops.

       -x      Reads a list of addresses from standard input, one per  line,  and  adds  them  to  the  vacation
               database.   Mail coming from these excluded addresses will not get a reply.  Whole domains can be
               excluded using the syntax “@domain”.

       -l      Print the contents of the vacation database files.  For each entry, the  address  the  reply  has
               been sent to and the associated time will be printed to standard output.

       When started without arguments, vacation will guide the user through the configuration process.

       No  message  will  be  sent unless login (or an alias supplied using the -a option) is part of either the
       “To:” or “Cc:” headers of the mail.  No messages from “???-REQUEST”, “Postmaster”, “UUCP”,  “MAILER”,  or
       “MAILER-DAEMON”  will be replied to (where these strings are case insensitive) nor is a notification sent
       if a “Precedence: bulk”, “Precedence: list”, “Precedence: junk”, “X-Spam-Flag: yes”  or  “Auto-submitted:
       (something  other  than no)” line is included in the mail headers.  The people who have sent you messages
       are maintained as a db(3) database in the file .vacation.db in your home directory.

       vacation expects a file .vacation.msg, in your home directory, containing a message to be  sent  back  to
       each sender.  It should be an entire message (including headers).  For example, it might contain:

             From: eric@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman)
             Subject: I am on vacation
             Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: The Vacation program
             Precedence: bulk

             I am on vacation until July 22.  If you have something urgent,
             please contact Keith Bostic <bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU>.
             --eric

       Any  occurrence  of  the  string $SUBJECT in .vacation.msg will be replaced by the subject of the message
       that triggered the vacation program.

       vacation reads the incoming message from standard input, checking the message headers for either the Unix
       “From” line or a “Return-Path” header to determine the sender.  If both are present the sender  from  the
       “Return-Path” header is used.  Sendmail(8) includes this “From” line automatically.

       Fatal  errors, such as calling vacation with incorrect arguments, or with non-existent logins, are logged
       on the standard error output and in the system log file, using syslog(3).

DIAGNOSTICS

       The vacation utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

FILES

       ~/.vacation.db   database file
       ~/.vacation.msg  message to send
       ~/.forward

SEE ALSO

       aliases(5), sendmail(8), syslogd(8)

HISTORY

       The vacation command appeared in 4.3BSD.

AUTHOR

       vacation was developed by Eric Allman and the University of California, Berkeley in 1983.
       This version is maintained by Marco d'Itri <md@linux.it> and contains code taken from the three free  BSD
       and some patches applied to a linux port.

Linux                                             June 15, 2003                                      VACATION(1)