NAME

aliases − aliases file for sendmail

USAGE

/usr/lib/aliases

DESCRIPTION

This file describes user ID aliases used by /usr/lib/sendmail.  This file is made up of an arbitrary number of lines of the form: name: name_1, name_2, name_3, . . . The name is the name to alias, and the name_n are the aliases for that name.  Lines beginning with white space are continuation lines.  Lines beginning with # are comments. 

Aliasing occurs only on local names.  Loops cannot occur, since no message will be sent to any person more than once. 

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 files /usr/lib/aliases.dir and /usr/lib/aliases.pag using the program newaliases(1).  A newaliases command should be executed each time the aliases file is changed for the change to take effect. 

NOTES

Because of restrictions in dbm(3X), a single alias cannot contain more than about 1000 bytes of information.  You can get longer aliases by “chaining”; that is, by making the last name in the alias be a dummy name that is a continuation alias. 

EXAMPLE

Here’s an example of an aliases file: ## #  Aliases in this file will NOT be expanded in the header from #  Mail, but WILL be visible over networks or from /bin/mail.  # # >>>>>>>>>> The program "newaliases" must be run after # >> NOTE >> this file is updated or else changes won’t # >>>>>>>>>> get to sendmail.  ##
 
MAILER-DAEMON:bob root: bcking
 
texhax: texhax_list tusers: t_users_list msgs: "|/usr/ucb/msgs -s" sherry: sar speedo: mr_earl

RELATED INFORMATION

DOMAIN/IX Administrator’s Reference for BSD4.2 newaliases(1), dbm(3X), sendmail(8)