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dot-forward(1) General Commands Manual dot-forward(1) NAME dot-forward - read a .forward file under qmail SYNOPSIS in ~/.qmail: | dot-forward [ -nN ] file ... OVERVIEW dot-forward forwards incoming messages according to sendmail-style in- structions in file, if file exists. Normally file is .forward. WARNING: If you create a .qmail file to enable dot-forward, make sure to add a second line specifying delivery to your normal mailbox. For example: |dot-forward .forward ./Mailbox COMPATIBILITY WARNING: dot-forward does not support :include: or mbox deliveries. You can use the delivery mechanism described in dot- qmail(5) instead. OPTIONS -N (Default.) Read and forward a message. -n Parse file and print the forwarding instructions in it, one per line; do not follow the instructions. You can use this option from the command line to see how your .forward file will be inter- preted: dot-forward -n .forward FILE HANDLING When a message arrives, dot-forward opens file and handles it as dis- cussed below. It exits 99, so qmail-local will ignore further instruc- tions in .qmail. Exception: If file specifies delivery directly to you, dot-forward exits 0, so qmail-local will read further instructions in .qmail. If file does not exist, dot-forward exits 0. You can list several files; then dot-forward will try each one in turn, using the first one that exists, or exiting 0 if none exist. COMPATIBILITY WARNING: dot-forward treats an empty file as if it did not exist. Versions of sendmail before V8 would throw away the incom- ing message. COMPATIBILITY WARNING: If dot-forward encounters a temporary error opening file, it exits 111, so that qmail-local will try again later. sendmail assumes incorrectly that file does not exist. COMPATIBILITY WARNING: file must be readable by dot-forward, which is normally running as the user. sendmail places different constraints on its .forward permissions, since it is normally running as root. FORWARDING Normally file contains an address. dot-forward forwards the message to that address. The address is parsed as if it were in an RFC 822 message header. Parenthesized comments and bracketed addresses are permitted: bob (Bob, the postmaster) @heaven.af.mil Addresses with special characters must be quoted: "spaced out mailbox"@heaven.af.mil Address groups are not permitted. file can contain any number of lines, each line containing any number of addresses. dot-forward forwards the message to each address: bob, fred, susan Joe Shmoe <shmoe@heaven.af.mil> An address without a fully qualified domain name is handled as de- scribed in qmail-header(5). Exception: Certain addresses without do- main names are handled specially, as described below. DIRECT DELIVERY If an address does not contain a domain name, and matches the environ- ment variable $USER (without regard to case), it specifies delivery di- rectly to you. If an address matches $USER@$HOST (without regard to case), it speci- fies delivery directly to you. COMPATIBILITY WARNING: sendmail's handling of quotes and backslashes violates RFC 821 and RFC 822, and is not supported by dot-forward. dot-forward treats \joe the same way as joe. The dot-qmail delivery mechanism lets each user manage several addresses, so there is no need for a special syntax to get around forwarding. COMMANDS If an address does not contain a domain name, and begins with a verti- cal bar, dot-forward takes the rest of the address as a command to run: bob, "|vacation bob" dot-forward feeds the message to the command, preceded by the environ- ment variables $UFLINE, $RPLINE, and $DTLINE. COMPATIBILITY WARNING: Internet addresses can legitimately start with a slash or vertical bar. dot-forward treats anything with an unquoted @ as an address. sendmail appears to have various problems coping with these addresses, and with commands that contain @ signs. COMMENTS Any line in file that begins with # is ignored: # this is a comment COMPATIBILITY WARNING: Versions of sendmail before V8 did not allow comments in .forward files. VERSION This is dot-forward 0.71. The dot-forward home page is http://pobox.com/~djb/dot-forward.html. SEE ALSO qmail-header(5), dot-qmail(5) dot-forward(1)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | OVERVIEW | OPTIONS | FILE HANDLING | FORWARDING | DIRECT DELIVERY | COMMANDS | COMMENTS | VERSION | SEE ALSO
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