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
       Sendmail:            The path name to the sendmail program.

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.