sendmail(1M) sendmail(1M)
NAME
sendmail - send mail over the internet
SYNOPSIS
sendmail [options] address ...
DESCRIPTION
sendmail sends a message to one or more recipients, routing the mes-
sage over whatever networks are necessary. sendmail forwards the mes-
sage to the correct place via the network.
sendmail is not intended as a user interface routine; other programs
provide user-friendly front ends; sendmail is used only to deliver
pre-formatted messages.
With no options, sendmail reads its standard input up to an end-of-
file or a line consisting only of a single dot 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 appropriately.
Aliasing can be prevented by preceding the address with a backslash.
Normally the sender is not included in any alias expansions, e.g. if
"john" sends to "group", and "group" includes "john" in the expansion,
then the letter will not be delivered to "john".
OPTIONS
-B type
Set the body type to type. Current legal values 7BIT or 8BITMIME.
-ba Switch to ARPANET mode. All input lines must end with a CR-LF,
and all messages will be generated with a CR-LF at the end. Also,
the "From:" and "Sender:" fields are examined for the name of the
sender.
-bd Run as a daemon. This requires Berkeley IPC. sendmail will fork
and run in background listening on socket 25 for incoming SMTP
connections. This is normally run from /etc/rc/rc2.d.
-bD Same as -bd except runs in foreground.
-bh Print the persistent host status database.
-bH Purge the persistent host status database.
-bi Initialize the alias database.
-bm Deliver mail in the usual way (default).
-bp Print a listing of the queue.
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-bs Use the SMTP protocol as described in RFC821 on standard input
and output. This option implies all the operations of the -ba
option that are compatible with SMTP.
-bt Run in address test mode. This mode reads addresses and shows the
steps in parsing; it is used for debugging configuration tables.
-bv Verify names only - does not try to collect or deliver a message.
Verify mode is normally used for validating users or mailing
lists.
-Cfile
Use alternate configuration file. sendmail refuses to run as root
if an alternate configuration file is specified.
-dX Set debugging value to X.
-F fullname
Set the full name of the sender.
-f name
Set the name of the "from" person (i.e. the sender of the mail).
-h N Set the hop count to N. The hop count is incremented 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.
-i Ignore dots alone on lines by themselves in incoming messages.
This should be set if you are reading data from a file.
-N dsn
Set delivery status notification conditions to dsn, which can be
never for no notifications or a comma separated list of the
values failure to be notified if delivery failed, delay to be
notified if delivery is delayed, and success to be notified when
the message is successfully delivered.
-n Don't do aliasing.
-O option=value
Set option option to the specified value. This form uses long
names. See below for more details.
-oxvalue
Set option x to the specified value. This form uses single char-
acter names only. The short names are not described in this
manual page; see the "Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide"
(= /opt/sendmaildoc/op.ps) for details.
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-pprotocol
Sets the name of the protocol used to receive the message. This
can be a simple protocol name such as "UUCP" or a protocol and
hostname, such as "UUCP:ucbvax".
-q[time]
Processed 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 example, -q1h30m or -q90m
would both set the timeout to one hour thirty minutes.
If time is specified, sendmail will run in background. This
option can be used safely with -bd.
-qIsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing substr as a substring of
the queue id.
-qRsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing substr as a substring of
one of the recipients.
-qSsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing substr as a substring of
the sender.
-R return
Set the amount of the message to be returned if the message
bounces. The return parameter can be full to return the entire
message or hdrs to return only the headers.
-rname
An alternate and obsolete form of the -f option.
-t Reads message for recipients. "To:", "Cc:", and "Bcc:" lines will
be scanned for recipient addresses. The "Bcc:" line will be
deleted before transmission. Any addresses in the argument list
will be suppressed, that is, they will not receive copies even if
listed in the message header.
-U Initial (user) submission. This should always be set when called
from a user agent such as Mail or exmh and never be set when
called by a network delivery agent such as rmail.
-V envid
Set the original envelope id. This is propagated across SMTP to
servers that support DSNs and is returned in DSN-compliant error
messages.
-v Goes into verbose mode. Alias expansions will be announced, etc.
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-Xlogfile
Logs all traffic in and out of mailers in the indicated log file.
This should only be used as a last resort for debugging mailer
bugs. It will log a lot of data very quickly.
Processing options
There are also a number of processing options that may be set. Nor-
mally these will only be used by a system administrator. Options may
be set either on the command line using the -o option (for short
names), the -O option (for long names), or in the configuration file.
This is a partial list limited to those options that are likely to be
useful on the command line and only shows the long names; for a com-
plete list (and details), consult the "Sendmail Installation and
Operation Guide" (= /opt/sendmaildoc/op.ps).
The options are:
AliasFile=file
Use alternate alias file.
HoldExpensive
On mailers that are considered "expensive" to connect to, don't
initiate immediate connection. This requires queueing.
CheckpointInterval=N
Checkpoint the queue file after every N successful deliveries
(default 10). This avoids excessive duplicate deliveries when
sending to long mailing lists interrupted by system crashes.
DeliveryMode=x
Set the delivery mode to x. Delivery modes are:
i for interactive (synchronous) delivery,
b for background (asynchronous) delivery,
q for queue only - i.e., actual delivery is done the next time
the queue is run, and
d for deferred - the same as
q except that database lookups (notably DNS and NIS lookups)
are avoided.
ErrorMode=x
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),
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p to print the errors on the terminal (default),
q to throw away error messages (only exit status is returned),
and
e to do special processing for the BerkNet.
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.
SaveFromLine
Save UNIX style "From" lines at the front of messages.
MaxHopCount=N
The maximum number of times a message is allowed to "hop" before
we decide it is in a loop.
IgnoreDots
Do not take dots on a line by themselves as a message terminator.
SendMimeErrors
Send error messages in MIME format. If not set, the DSN (Delivery
Status Notification) SMTP extension is disabled.
ConnectionCacheTimeout=timeout
Set connection cache timeout.
ConnectionCacheSize=N
Set connection cache size.
LogLevel=n
The log level.
MeToo
Send to "me" (the sender) also if I am in an alias expansion.
CheckAliases
Validate the right hand side of aliases during a newaliases(1M)
command.
OldStyleHeaders
If set, this message may have old style headers. If not set, this
message is guaranteed to have new style headers (i.e., commas
instead of spaces between addresses). If set, an adaptive algo-
rithm is used that will correctly determine the header format in
most cases.
QueueDirectory=queuedir
Select the directory in which to queue messages.
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StatusFile=file
Save statistics in the named file.
Timeout.queuereturn=time
Set the timeout on undelivered messages in the queue to the
specified time. After delivery has failed (e.g., because of a
host being down) for this amount of time, failed messages will be
returned to the sender. The default is five days.
UserDatabaseSpec=userdatabase
If set, a user database is consulted to get forwarding informa-
tion. You can consider this an adjunct to the aliasing mechanism,
except that the database is intended to be distributed; aliases
are local to a particular host. This may not be available if your
sendmail does not have the -USERDB option compiled in.
ForkEachJob
Fork each job during queue runs. May be convenient on memory-poor
machines.
SevenBitInput
Strip incoming messages to seven bits.
EightBitMode=mode
Set the handling of eight bit input to seven bit destinations to
mode:
m (mimefy) will convert to seven-bit MIME format,
p (pass) will pass it as eight bits (but violates protocols),
and
s (strict) will bounce the message.
MinQueueAge=timeout
Sets how long a job must ferment in the queue between attempts to
send it.
DefaultCharSet=charset
Sets the default character set used to label 8-bit data that is
not otherwise labelled.
DialDelay=sleeptime
If opening a connection fails, sleep for sleeptime seconds and
try again. Useful on dial-on-demand sites.
NoRecipientAction=action
Set the behavior when there are no recipient headers ("To:",
"Cc": or "Bcc:") in the message to action:
none leaves the message unchanged,
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add-to
adds a "To:" header with the envelope recipients,
add-apparently-to
adds an "Apparently-To:" header with the envelope reci-
pients,
add-bcc
adds an empty "Bcc:" header, and
add-to-undisclosed
adds a header reading "To: undisclosed-recipients:;".
MaxDaemonChildren=N
Sets the maximum number of children that an incoming SMTP daemon
will allow to spawn at any time to N.
ConnectionRateThrottle=N
Sets the maximum number of connections per second to the SMTP
port to N.
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/bin/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:
poets: ":include:/usr/local/lib/poets.list"
would read /usr/local/lib/poets.list for the list of addresses making
up the group.
DIAGNOSTICS
sendmail returns an exit status describing what it did. The codes are
defined in <sysexits.h>:
00 (EXOK) Successful completion on all addresses.
67 (EXNOUSER) User name not recognized.
69 (EXUNAVAILABLE) Catchall meaning necessary resources were not
available.
70 (EXSOFTWARE) Internal software error, including bad arguments.
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71 (EXOSERR) Temporary operating system error, such as "cannot
fork".
68 (EXNOHOST) Host name not recognized.
75 (EXTEMPFAIL) Message could not be sent immediately, but was
queued.
If invoked as newaliases, sendmail will rebuild the alias database. If
invoked as mailq, sendmail will print the contents of the mail queue.
FILES
Except for the file /etc/sendmail.cf itself, the following pathnames
are all specified in /etc/sendmail.cf. Thus, these values are only
approximations.
/etc/aliases
Raw data for alias names
/etc/aliases.db
Data base of alias names
/etc/sendmail.cf
Configuration file
/usr/lib/sendmail.hf
Help file
/etc/sendmail.st
Collected statistics
/var/spool/mqueue/*
Temporary files
/etc/sendmail.pid
The process id of the daemon
/opt/sendmaildoc/op.ps
Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide; PostScript format
/opt/sendmaildoc/intro.ps
Sendmail - An Internetwork Mail Router; PostScript format
SEE ALSO
mail(1-ucb), rmail(1-ucb), mail.local(1M), mailq(1M), newaliases(1M),
syslog(3C), aliases(4).
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