NAME

       spost - feed a message to sendmail

SYNOPSIS

       spost [-verbose | -noverbose] file [-Version] [-help]

DESCRIPTION

       Spost  is the program called by send to feed the message in file to sendmail for delivery.  In fact, many
       of the features attributed to send in its manual page are performed by  spost,  with  send  acting  as  a
       preprocessor.   Thus,  it  is  spost  which parses the various header fields, appends `From:' and `Date:'
       lines, and finally feeds the message to the MTA.  Spost will not normally be called directly by the user.

       Spost searches the `To:', `Cc:', `Bcc:', `Dcc:', `Fcc:', and `Resent-xxx:' header lines of the  specified
       message for destination addresses,

       Spost invokes sendmail with all recipients, except the blind ones (`Bcc:'), as command line arguments:
              sendmail -i [-v] recipients ...

       If  a  `Bcc:' field is encountered, its addresses will be used for delivery, and the `Bcc:' field will be
       removed from the message sent  to  sighted  recipients.   The  blind  recipients  will  receive  a  newly
       constructed message with a copy of the original message attached.  MIME rules are used for encapsulation.
       (spost invokes send to send the Bcc message.)

       If a `Dcc:' field is encountered, the field will be removed before sending the message. The Dcc recipient
       will receive the message as well, but without being mentioned in the recipient headers.

       In  contrast to Bcc, the Dcc recipient receives the same original message as all the sighted reciepients,
       whereas the Bcc recipient receives a special, newly constructed  message,  which  contains  the  original
       message as an attachment.

       Bcc  is  probably  a  good  choice for a message with both sighted and invisible reciepients (e.g. inform
       someone privately about the message being sent). Dcc is probably a good choice for a message to  a  group
       of only invisible recipients (e.g. invite to a party).

       The  `Aliasfile'  profile  entry  can be used to specify one or more files that spost should take aliases
       from.

       Aliasing is done on any address field. Those are: `From:',  `To:',  `Cc:',  `Bcc:'  and  `Dcc:',  or  the
       `Resent-xxx:' versions of these fields.

       The  -verbose  switch  enables informational messages.  For example, the `-v' switch will be added to the
       sendmail invocation.

       If you specify a `From:' line manually in the message draft, it will be used as provided.  If there is no
       `From:'  line  in  the  draft,  spost  uses  the  `Default-From'  profile entry, if set.  Otherwise spost
       constructs the `From:' line from the user's login name and the full name from  the  GECOS  field  of  the
       passwd file.  An example is `From: Dan Harkless <dan>'.

       If you set the $SIGNATURE environment variable.  Its value overrides the full name from the GECOS field.

       A  `Sender:'  header  will be added in two cases.  First, if the `From:' line given in the draft contains
       one or more addresses, of which none is the user's own one, as defined  by  `Alternate-Mailboxes'.   (The
       sender  address  will  then  be  determined  equally  as  described above for the absent `From:' header.)
       Second, if the `From:' line contains multiple addresses, of which at least one is the user's own address.
       The first own address will be used as the sender address.

       Note that this applies equally to `Resent-From:' lines in messages sent with dist.

       Spost  tries  to  fully  qualify  the  addresses in every address field.  Your MTA is supposed to add the
       correct domain, if there is none after aliasing.

       The draft is filed to the folders in the Fcc headers by refile.

FILES

       None

PROFILE COMPONENTS

       Aliasfile:           For default alias files
       Default-From:        The default From header
       Alternate-Mailboxes: The user's addresses

SEE ALSO

       send(1), mh-mail(5), mh-alias(5), mh-tailor(5), refile(1), Standard for the Format of ARPA Internet  Text
       Messages (RFC-822)

DEFAULTS

       `-noverbose'

CONTEXT

       None

BUGS

       None

HISTORY

       The  spost  in  mmh-0.1  used sendmail's -t flag to have sendmail extract the recipients from the message
       headers. Now, it passes the recipients as command line arguments. This provides better  compatibility  to
       other sendmail implementations.