SENDMAIL(8) 386BSD System Manager's Manual SENDMAIL(8)
NAME
sendmail - send mail over the internet
SYNOPSIS
sendmail [flags] [address ...]
newaliases
mailq [-v]
DESCRIPTION
Sendmail sends a message to one or more recipients, routing the message
over whatever networks are necessary. Sendmail does internetwork
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 pre-
formatted messages.
With no flags, 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'.
Parameters
-Btype Set the body type to type. Current legal values 7BIT or
8BITMIME.
-ba Go into 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.
-bi Initialize the alias database.
-bm Deliver mail in the usual way (default).
-bp Print a listing of the queue.
-bs Use the SMTP protocol as described in RFC821 on standard
input and output. This flag implies all the operations of
the -ba flag 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 - do 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.
-Ffullname Set the full name of the sender.
-fname Sets the name of the ``from'' person (i.e., 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
become is the same as the person you are.
-hN 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.
-n Don't do aliasing.
-ox value Set option x to the specified value. Options are described
below.
-pprotocol Set 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.
-rname An alternate and obsolete form of the -f flag.
-t Read 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.
-v Go into verbose mode. Alias expansions will be announced,
etc.
-X logfile Log 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.
Options
There are also a number of processing options that may be set. Normally
these will only be used by a system administrator. Options may be set
either on the command line using the -o flag or in the configuration
file. This is a partial list; for a complete list (and details), consult
the Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide. The options are:
Afile Use alternate alias file.
bnblocks The minimum number of free blocks needed on the spool
filesystem.
c On mailers that are considered ``expensive'' to connect to,
don't initiate immediate connection. This requires queueing.
C 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.
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 - i.e.,
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 (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.
f Save UNIX-style From lines at the front of messages.
G Match local mail names against the GECOS portion of the
password file.
g N The default group id to use when calling mailers.
Hfile The SMTP help file.
h N The maximum number of times a message is allowed to ``hop''
before we decide it is in a loop.
i Do not take dots on a line by themselves as a message
terminator.
j Send error messages in MIME format.
Ktimeout Set connection cache timeout.
kN Set connection cache size.
Ln The log level.
l Pay attention to the Errors-To: header.
m Send to ``me'' (the sender) also if I am in an alias
expansion.
n Validate the right hand side of aliases during a
newaliases(1) command.
o 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 algorithm is used that will correctly determine the
header format in most cases.
Qqueuedir Select the directory in which to queue messages.
Sfile Save statistics in the named file.
s Always instantiate the queue file, even under circumstances
where it is not strictly necessary. This provides safety
against system crashes during delivery.
Ttime 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 three days.
tstz, dtz Set the name of the time zone.
Uuserdatabase
If set, a user database is consulted to get forwarding
information. 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.
uN Set the default user id for mailers.
Y Fork each job during queue runs. May be convenient on
memory-poor machines.
7 Strip incoming messages to seven bits.
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.
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 arguments.
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.
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
/etc/sendmail.hf help file
/var/log/sendmail.st collected statistics
/var/spool/mqueue/* temp files
/var/run/sendmail.pid
The process id of the daemon
SEE ALSO
binmail(1), mail(1), rmail(1), syslog(3), aliases(5), mailaddr(7),
rc(8);
DARPA Internet Request For Comments RFC819, RFC821, RFC822.
Sendmail - An Internetwork Mail Router, No. 9, SMM.
Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide, No. 8, SMM.
HISTORY
The sendmail command appeared in 4.2BSD.
4th Berkeley Distribution December 11, 1993 5