mailcnfg(4) mailcnfg(4)
NAME
mailcnfg - initialization information for mail and rmail
DESCRIPTION
The /etc/mail/mailcnfg file contains initialization information for
the mail and rmail commands. Each entry in mailcnfg consists of a line
of the form
Keyword = Value
Leading whitespace, whitespace surrounding the equal sign, and trail-
ing whitespace is ignored. Keyword may not contain embedded whi-
tespace, but whitespace may appear within Value. Undefined keywords or
badly formed entries are silently ignored.
Keyword Definitions
DEBUG Takes the same values as the -x invocation option
of mail. This provides a way of setting a system-
wide debug/tracing level. Typically DEBUG is set
to a value of 2, which provides minimal diagnos-
tics useful for debugging mail and rmail failures.
The value of the -x mail invocation option will
override any specification of DEBUG in mailcnfg.
CLUSTER To identify a closely coupled set of systems by
one name to all other systems, set Value to the
cluster name. This string is used to supply the
...remote from... information on the From header
line rather than the system nodename returned by
uname(2).
FAILSAFE In the event that the /var/mail directory is
accessed through NFS within a cluster provisions
must be made to allow for the directory not being
available when local mail is to be delivered
(remote system crash, NFS problems). Value is a
string that indicates where to forward the current
message for delivery. Typically this is the remote
system that actually owns /var/mail. In this way,
the message is queued for delivery to that system
when it becomes available. For example, assume a
cluster of systems (sysa, sysb, sysc) where
/var/mail is physically mounted on sysc and made
available to the other machines through NFS. If
sysc were to crash, the NFS-accessible /var/mail
would become unavailable and local deliveries of
mail would go to /var/mail on the local system.
When /var/mail is re-mounted through NFS, all mes-
sages deposited in the local directory would be
hidden and essentially lost. To prevent this, if
FAILSAFE is defined in mailcnfg, mail and rmail
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mailcnfg(4) mailcnfg(4)
check for the existence of /var/mail/:saved, a
required subdirectory. If this subdirectory does
not exist, mail assumes that the NFS-accessible
/var/mail is not available and invokes the fail-
safe mechanism of automatically forwarding the
message to Value. In this example Value would be
sysc!%n. The %n keyword is expanded to be the
recipient name and thus the message would be for-
warded to sysc!recipientname. Because sysc is not
available, the message remains on the local system
until sysc is available, and then sent there for
delivery.
DELEMPTYMFILE If not specified, the default action of mail and
rmail is to delete empty mailfiles if the permis-
sions are 0660 and to retain empty mailfiles if
the permissions are anything else. If Value is
yes, empty mailfiles are always deleted, regard-
less of file permissions. If Value is no, empty
mailfiles are never deleted.
DOMAIN This string is used to supply the system domain
name in place of the domain name returned by get-
domainname.
SMARTERHOST This string may be set to a smarter host which may
be referenced within the mail surrogate file
through X.
mailsurrkeyword Certain predefined single letter keywords are tex-
tually substituted in surrogate command fields
before they are executed [see mailsurr(4)]. While
none of the predefined keywords may be changed in
meaning, new ones may be defined to provide a
shorthand notation for long strings (such as
/usr/lib/mail/surrcmd) which may appear repeatedly
within the mailsurr file. Uppercase letters are
reserved for future use and will be ignored if
encountered here.
NOTES
If /var/mail is accessed through NFS and the subdirectory
/var/mail/:saved is not removed from the local system, the FAILSAFE
mechanism will be subverted.
FILES
/etc/mail/mailcnfg
/etc/mail/mailsurr
/var/mail/:saved
/usr/lib/mail/surrcmd
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mailcnfg(4) mailcnfg(4)
SEE ALSO
mail(1), uname(2), mailsurr(4).
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