NAME

aliases − aliases file for sendmail

SYNTAX

/usr/lib/aliases

DESCRIPTION

The /usr/lib/aliases  file describes user id aliases used by /usr/lib/sendmail.  It is formatted as a series of lines of the form:

name: name_1, name2, 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 can not 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 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 newaliases command.  A newaliases command should be executed each time the aliases file is changed for the change to take effect. 

RESTRICTIONS

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, make the last name in the alias be a dummy name which is a continuation alias. 

SEE  ALSO

dbm(3x), sendmail(8)
“SENDMAIL Installation and Operation Guide”