Ubuntu Manpage: postalias - Postfix alias database maintenance

Provided by: postfix_3.6.4-1ubuntu1.3_amd64

NAME

       postalias - Postfix alias database maintenance

SYNOPSIS

       postalias [-Nfinoprsuvw] [-c config_dir] [-d key] [-q key]
               [file_type:]file_name ...

DESCRIPTION

The postalias(1) command creates or queries one or more Postfix alias databases, or updates an existing
one. The input and output file formats are expected to be compatible with Sendmail version 8, and are
expected to be suitable for the use as NIS alias maps.

If the result files do not exist they will be created with the same group and other read permissions as
their source file.

While a database update is in progress, signal delivery is postponed, and an exclusive, advisory, lock is
placed on the entire database, in order to avoid surprises in spectator processes.

The format of Postfix alias input files is described in aliases(5).

By default the lookup key is mapped to lowercase to make the lookups case insensitive; as of Postfix 2.3
this case folding happens only with tables whose lookup keys are fixed-case strings such as btree:, dbm:
or hash:. With earlier versions, the lookup key is folded even with tables where a lookup field can match
both upper and lower case text, such as regexp: and pcre:. This resulted in loss of information with
$number substitutions.

Options:

-c config_dir
Read the main.cf configuration file in the named directory instead of the default configuration
directory.

-d key Search the specified maps for key and remove one entry per map. The exit status is zero when the
requested information was found.

If a key value of - is specified, the program reads key values from the standard input stream. The
exit status is zero when at least one of the requested keys was found.

-f Do not fold the lookup key to lower case while creating or querying a table.

With Postfix version 2.3 and later, this option has no effect for regular expression tables.
There, case folding is controlled by appending a flag to a pattern.

-i Incremental mode. Read entries from standard input and do not truncate an existing database. By
default, postalias(1) creates a new database from the entries in file_name.

-N Include the terminating null character that terminates lookup keys and values. By default,
postalias(1) does whatever is the default for the host operating system.

-n Don't include the terminating null character that terminates lookup keys and values. By default,
postalias(1) does whatever is the default for the host operating system.

-o Do not release root privileges when processing a non-root input file. By default, postalias(1)
drops root privileges and runs as the source file owner instead.

-p Do not inherit the file access permissions from the input file when creating a new file. Instead,
create a new file with default access permissions (mode 0644).

-q key Search the specified maps for key and write the first value found to the standard output stream.
The exit status is zero when the requested information was found.

Note: this performs a single query with the key as specified, and does not make iterative queries
with substrings of the key as described in the aliases(5) manual page.

If a key value of - is specified, the program reads key values from the standard input stream and
writes one line of key: value output for each key that was found. The exit status is zero when at
least one of the requested keys was found.

-r When updating a table, do not complain about attempts to update existing entries, and make those
updates anyway.

-s Retrieve all database elements, and write one line of key: value output for each element. The
elements are printed in database order, which is not necessarily the same as the original input
order. This feature is available in Postfix version 2.2 and later, and is not available for all
database types.

-u Disable UTF-8 support. UTF-8 support is enabled by default when "smtputf8_enable = yes". It
requires that keys and values are valid UTF-8 strings.

-v Enable verbose logging for debugging purposes. Multiple -v options make the software increasingly
verbose.

-w When updating a table, do not complain about attempts to update existing entries, and ignore those
attempts.

Arguments:

file_type
The database type. To find out what types are supported, use the "postconf -m" command.

The postalias(1) command can query any supported file type, but it can create only the following
file types:

btree The output is a btree file, named file_name.db. This is available on systems with support
for db databases.

cdb The output is one file named file_name.cdb. This is available on systems with support for
cdb databases.

dbm The output consists of two files, named file_name.pag and file_name.dir. This is available
on systems with support for dbm databases.

fail A table that reliably fails all requests. The lookup table name is used for logging only.
This table exists to simplify Postfix error tests.

hash The output is a hashed file, named file_name.db. This is available on systems with support
for db databases.

lmdb The output is a btree-based file, named file_name.lmdb. lmdb supports concurrent writes
and reads from different processes, unlike other supported file-based tables. This is
available on systems with support for lmdb databases.

sdbm The output consists of two files, named file_name.pag and file_name.dir. This is available
on systems with support for sdbm databases.

When no file_type is specified, the software uses the database type specified via the
default_database_type configuration parameter. The default value for this parameter depends on
the host environment.

file_name
The name of the alias database source file when creating a database.

DIAGNOSTICS

       Problems are logged to the standard error stream and to syslogd(8) or postlogd(8). No output  means  that
       no problems were detected. Duplicate entries are skipped and are flagged with a warning.

       postalias(1)  terminates  with  zero  exit status in case of success (including successful "postalias -q"
       lookup) and terminates with non-zero exit status in case of failure.

ENVIRONMENT

       MAIL_CONFIG
              Directory with Postfix configuration files.

       MAIL_VERBOSE
              Enable verbose logging for debugging purposes.

CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS

       The following main.cf parameters are especially relevant to this program.

       The text below provides only a parameter summary. See postconf(5) for more details including examples.

       alias_database (see 'postconf -d' output)
              The alias databases for local(8) delivery that are updated with  "newaliases"  or  with  "sendmail
              -bi".

       config_directory (see 'postconf -d' output)
              The default location of the Postfix main.cf and master.cf configuration files.

       berkeley_db_create_buffer_size (16777216)
              The per-table I/O buffer size for programs that create Berkeley DB hash or btree tables.

       berkeley_db_read_buffer_size (131072)
              The per-table I/O buffer size for programs that read Berkeley DB hash or btree tables.

       default_database_type (see 'postconf -d' output)
              The default database type for use in newaliases(1), postalias(1) and postmap(1) commands.

       import_environment (see 'postconf -d' output)
              The  list  of  environment  parameters  that  a  privileged  Postfix  process  will  import from a
              non-Postfix parent process, or name=value environment overrides.

       smtputf8_enable (yes)
              Enable preliminary SMTPUTF8 support for the protocols described in RFC 6531..6533.

       syslog_facility (mail)
              The syslog facility of Postfix logging.

       syslog_name (see 'postconf -d' output)
              A prefix that is prepended to the process name in syslog records, so that,  for  example,  "smtpd"
              becomes "prefix/smtpd".

       Available in Postfix 2.11 and later:

       lmdb_map_size (16777216)
              The initial OpenLDAP LMDB database size limit in bytes.

STANDARDS

       RFC 822 (ARPA Internet Text Messages)

README FILES

       Use "postconf readme_directory" or "postconf html_directory" to locate this information.
       DATABASE_README, Postfix lookup table overview

LICENSE

       The Secure Mailer license must be distributed with this software.

AUTHOR(S)

       Wietse Venema
       IBM T.J. Watson Research
       P.O. Box 704
       Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA

       Wietse Venema
       Google, Inc.
       111 8th Avenue
       New York, NY 10011, USA

                                                                                                    POSTALIAS(1)