xenial (5) aliases.5.gz

NAME

       aliases - aliases file for smtpd

SYNOPSIS

       aliases

DESCRIPTION

       This manual page describes the format of the aliases file, as used by smtpd(8).  An alias in its simplest
       form is used to assign an arbitrary name to an email address, or a group of email addresses.  This
       provides a convenient way to send mail.  For example an alias could refer to all users of a group: email
       to that alias would be sent to all members of the group.  Much more complex aliases can be defined
       however: an alias can refer to other aliases, be used to send mail to a file instead of another person,
       or to execute various commands.

       Within the file, Ql # is a comment delimiter; anything placed after it is discarded.  The file consists
       of key/value mappings of the form: -filled -offset indent key: value1, value2, value3, ...

       key is always folded to lowercase before alias lookups to ensure that there can be no ambiguity.  The key
       is expanded to the corresponding values, which consist of one or more of the following:

            user   A user on the host machine.  The user must have a valid entry in the passwd(5) database file.

            /path/to/file
                   Append messages to file, specified by its absolute pathname.

            | command
                   Pipe the message to command on its standard input.  The command is run under the privileges
                   of the daemon's unprivileged account.

            : include: /path/to/file
                   Include any definitions in file as alias entries.  The format of the file is identical to
                   this one.

            user-part@domain-part
                   An email address in RFC 5322 format (see mailaddr(7)).  If an address extension is appended
                   to the user-part, it is stripped so that an address such as user+ext@example.com will only
                   use the part that precedes Sq + as a key.

            error: code message
                   A status code and message to return.  The code must be 3 digits, starting 4XX (TempFail) or
                   5XX (PermFail).  The message must be present and can be freely chosen.

            maildir:/path
                   Deliver messages to Maildir at the path.

FILES

            /etc/aliases
                   Default aliases file.

SEE ALSO

       smtpd.conf(5), makemap(8), newaliases(8), smtpd(8)

HISTORY

       The aliases file format appeared in Bx 4.0.

                                          $Mdocdate: February 4 2014 $                                ALIASES(5)