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  address,  the  envelope  sender
       address  of  the  message  is  rewritten  to  that address.  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 ``.forward''  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 continuation alias.

HISTORY

       The aliases file format appeared in 4.0BSD.

                                   $Date: 2004/07/12 05:39:21 $                        ALIASES(5)