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ALIASES(5)		       File Formats Manual		      ALIASES(5)

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  ad-
     dress,  the envelope sender address of the message is rewritten to that ad-
     dress.  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 ``.for-
     ward'' 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 contin-
     uation alias.

HISTORY
     The aliases file format appeared in 4.0BSD.

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

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