sendmail(1M) sendmail(1M)NAME sendmail - send mail over the Internet SYNOPSIS /usr/lib/sendmail [flag...] [address...] DESCRIPTION sendmail sends a message to one or more addresses, routing the message over whatever networks are necessary. sendmail does inter-network forwarding as necessary to deliver the message to the correct place. sendmail is not intended as a user interface routine; other programs provide user-friendly front ends; sendmail is used only to deliver preformatted messages. With no flag options, sendmail reads its standard input up to an end-of-file or a line consisting of a single dot only and sends a copy of the message found there to all of the addresses listed. It determines the network(s) to use based on the syntax and contents of the addresses. Local addresses are looked up in a file and aliased ap- propriately. Aliasing can be prevented by preceding the ad- dress with a backslash. Normally the sender is not included in any alias expansions; for example, if john sends to group, and group includes john in the expansion, then the letter will not be delivered to john. Flag options are -ba Goes into ARPANET mode. All input lines must end with a RETURN and all messages will be gen- erated with a RETURN at the end. Also, the From: and Sender: fields are examined for the name of the sender. -bd Runs as a daemon. This requires Berkeley IPC. sendmail will fork and run in the background, listening on socket 25 for incoming SMTP connec- tions. This is normally run from /etc/inittab. -bi Initialize the alias database. -bm Delivers mail in the usual way (default). -bp Prints a listing of the queue. -bs Uses the SMTP protocol as described in RFC821 on standard input and output. This flag implies all the operations of the -ba flag that are com- patible with SMTP. April, 1990 1
sendmail(1M) sendmail(1M)-bt Runs in address test mode. This mode reads ad- dresses and shows the steps in parsing; it is used for debugging configuration tables. -bv Verifies names only; do not try to collect or deliver a message. Verify mode is normally used for validating users or mailing lists. -bz Creates the configuration freeze file. -Cfile Uses alternate configuration file. sendmail re- fuses to run as root if an alternate configura- tion file is specified. The frozen configura- tion file is bypassed. -dX Sets debugging value to X. -Ffullname Sets the full name of the sender. -fname Sets the name of the from person (that is, the sender of the mail). -f can only be used by ``trusted'' users (normally root, daemon, and network) or if the person you are trying to be- come is the same as the person you are. -hN Sets the hop count to N. The hop count is in- cremented every time the mail is processed. When it reaches a limit, the mail is returned with an error message, the victim of an aliasing loop. If not specified, Received: lines in the message are counted. -n Doesn't do aliasing. -ox value Sets option x to the specified value. Options are described later. -q[time] Processes saved messages in the queue at given intervals. If time is omitted, process the queue once. time is given as a tagged number, with s being seconds, m being minutes, h being hours, d being days, and w being weeks. For ex- ample, -q1h30m or -q90m would both set the timeout to one hour thirty minutes. If time is specified, sendmail will run in the background. This option can be used safely with -bd. -rname An alternate and obsolete form of the -f flag. -t Reads message for recipients. To:, Cc:, and Bcc: lines will be scanned for recipient ad- dresses. The Bcc: line will be deleted before 2 April, 1990
sendmail(1M) sendmail(1M)transmission. Any addresses in the argument list will be suppressed, that is, they will not receive copies even if listed in the message header. -v Goes into verbose mode. Alias expansions will be announced, and so forth. There are also a number of processing options that may be set. Normally these will only be used by a system adminis- trator. Options may be set either on the command line using the -o flag or in the configuration file. The options are Afile Uses alternate alias file. c On mailers that are considered ``expensive'' to connect to, doesn't initiate immediate connection. This re- quires queuing. dx Set the delivery mode to x. Delivery modes are i for interactive (synchronous) delivery, b for background (asynchronous) delivery, and q for queue only - that is, actual delivery is done the next time the queue is run. D Try to automatically rebuild the alias database if necessary. ex Set error processing to mode x. Valid modes are m to mail back the error message, w to ``write'' back the error message (or mail it back if the sender is not logged in), p to print the errors on the terminal (de- fault), and q to throw away error messages (only exit status is returned). If the text of the message is not mailed back by modes m or w and if the sender is local to this machine, a copy of the message is appended to the file dead.letter in the sender's home directory. Fmode The mode to use when creating temporary files. f Saves UNIX-style From lines at the front of messages. gN The default group ID to use when calling mailers. Hfile The SMTP help file. i Doesn't take dots on a line by themselves as a message terminator. April, 1990 3
sendmail(1M) sendmail(1M)Ln The log level. m Sends to ``me'' (the sender) even in an alias expan- sion. o If set, this message may have old style headers. If not set, this message is guaranteed to have new style headers (that is, commas instead of spaces between ad- dresses). If set, an adaptive algorithm is used that will correctly determine the header format in most cases. Qqueuedir Selects the directory in which to queue messages. rtimeout The timeout on reads; if none is set, sendmail will wait forever for a mailer. This option violates the word (if not the intent) of the SMTP specification, so the timeout should probably be fairly large. Sfile Saves statistics in the named file. s Always instantiates the queue file, even under cir- cumstances where it is not strictly necessary. This provides safety against system crashes during delivery. Ttime Sets the timeout on undelivered messages in the queue to the specified time. After delivery has failed (for example, because of a host being down) for this amount of time, failed messages will be returned to the sender. The default is three days. tstz,dtz Sets the name of the time zone. uN Sets the default user ID for mailers. In aliases, the first character of a name may be a vertical bar to cause interpretation of the rest of the name as a command to pipe the mail to. It may be necessary to quote the name to keep sendmail from suppressing the blanks from between arguments. For example, a common alias is msgs: "|/usr/ucb/msgs -s" Aliases may also have the syntax :include:filename to ask sendmail to read the named file for a list of recipients. For example, an alias such as 4 April, 1990
sendmail(1M) sendmail(1M)poets: ":include:/usr/local/lib/poets.list" would read /usr/local/lib/poets.list for the list of ad- dresses making up the group. sendmail returns an exit status describing what it did. The codes are defined in <sysexits.h>. EX_OK Successful completion on all addresses. EX_NOUSER User name not recognized. EX_UNAVAILABLE Catchall meaning necessary resources were not available. EX_SYNTAX Syntax error in address. EX_SOFTWARE Internal software error, including bad argu- ments. EX_OSERR Temporary operating system error, such as ``cannot fork''. EX_NOHOST Host name not recognized. EX_TEMPFAIL Message could not be sent immediately, but was queued. FILES usr/lib/aliases raw data for alias names usr/lib/aliases.pag usr/lib/aliases.dir data base of alias names usr/lib/sendmail.cf configuration file usr/lib/sendmail.fc frozen configuration usr/lib/sendmail.hf help file usr/lib/sendmail.st collected statistics usr/spool/mqueue/* temp files SEE ALSO mail(1), rmail(1), mailq(1M), newaliases(1M), aliases(4). A/UX Network System Administration. April, 1990 5