NAME

       aliases - aliases file for sendmail

SYNOPSIS

       aliases

DESCRIPTION

       This  file describes user ID aliases used by sendmail.  The file resides in /etc/mail and is formatted as
       a series of lines of the form

              name: addr_1, addr_2, addr_3, . . .

       The name is the name to alias, and the addr_n are the aliases for  that  name.   addr_n  can  be  another
       alias, a local username, a local filename, a command, an include file, or an external address.

       Local Username
              username

              The username must be available via getpwnam(3).

       Local Filename
              /path/name

              Messages are appended to the file specified by the full pathname (starting with a slash (/))

       Command
              |command

              A command starts with a pipe symbol (|), it receives messages via standard input.

       Include File
              :include: /path/name

              The aliases in pathname are added to the aliases for name.

       E-Mail Address
              user@domain

              An e-mail address in RFC 822 format.

       Lines  beginning  with white space are continuation lines.  Another way to continue lines is by placing a
       backslash directly before a newline.  Lines beginning with # are comments.

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

       If  an alias is found for name, sendmail then checks for an alias for owner-name.  If it is found and the
       result of the lookup expands to a single address, the envelope sender address of the message is rewritten
       to that address.  If it is found and the result expands to more than one  address,  the  envelope  sender
       address is changed to owner-name.

       After  aliasing  has  been  done,  local  and valid recipients who have a ``.forward'' file in their home
       directory have messages forwarded to the list of users defined in that file.

       This is only the raw data file; the actual aliasing information is placed into a  binary  format  in  the
       file  /etc/mail/aliases.db using the program newaliases(1).  A newaliases command should be executed each
       time the aliases file is changed for the change to take effect.

SEE ALSO

       newaliases(1), dbm(3), dbopen(3), db_open(3), sendmail(8)

       SENDMAIL Installation and Operation Guide.

       SENDMAIL An Internetwork Mail Router.

BUGS

       If you have compiled sendmail with DBM support instead of NEWDB, you may  have  encountered  problems  in
       dbm(3)  restricting  a  single  alias  to about 1000 bytes of information.  You can get longer aliases by
       ``chaining''; that is, make the last name in the alias be a dummy name which is a continuation alias.

HISTORY

       The aliases file format appeared in 4.0BSD.

                                          $Date: 2013-11-22 20:51:55 $                                ALIASES(5)