SYNOPSIS
newaliases
DESCRIPTION
The aliases table provides a system-wide mechanism to redirect mail for
local recipients. The redirections are processed by the Postfix
local(8) delivery agent.
Normally, the aliases table is specified as a text file that serves as
input to the postalias(1) command. The result, an indexed file in dbm
or db format, is used for fast lookup by the mail system. Execute the
command newaliases in order to rebuild the indexed file after changing
the Postfix alias database.
The input and output file formats are expected to be compatible with
Sendmail version 8, and are expected to be suitable for the use as NIS
maps.
Users can control delivery of their own mail by setting up .forward
files in their home directory. Lines in per-user .forward files have
the same syntax as the right-hand side of aliases entries.
The format of the alias database input file is as follows:
o An alias definition has the form
name: value1, value2, ...
o Empty lines and whitespace-only lines are ignored, as are lines
whose first non-whitespace character is a `#'.
o A logical line starts with non-whitespace text. A line that
starts with whitespace continues a logical line.
The name is a local address (no domain part). Use double quotes when
the name contains any special characters such as whitespace, `#', `:',
or `@'. The name is folded to lowercase, in order to make database
lookups case insensitive.
In addition, when an alias exists for owner-name, delivery diagnostics
are directed to that address, instead of to the originator. This is
typically used to direct delivery errors to the owner of a mailing
list, who is in a better position to deal with mailing list delivery
problems than the originator of the undelivered mail.
The value contains one or more of the following:
address
Mail is forwarded to address, which is compatible with the RFC
822 standard.
/file/name
ment an expensive black hole.
:include:/file/name
Mail is sent to the destinations listed in the named file.
Lines in :include: files have the same syntax as the right-hand
side of alias entries.
A destination can be any destination that is described in this
manual page. However, delivery to "|command" and /file/name is
disallowed by default. To enable, edit the allow_mail_to_com-
mands and allow_mail_to_files configuration parameters.
ADDRESS EXTENSION
When alias database search fails, and the recipient localpart contains
the optional recipient delimiter (e.g., user+foo), the search is
repeated for the unextended address (e.g., user).
CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS
The following main.cf parameters are especially relevant. The text
below provides only a parameter summary. See postconf(5) for more
details including examples.
alias_database
List of alias databases that are updated by the newaliases(1)
command.
alias_maps
List of alias databases queried by the local(8) delivery agent.
allow_mail_to_commands
Restrict the usage of mail delivery to external command.
allow_mail_to_files
Restrict the usage of mail delivery to external file.
expand_owner_alias
When delivering to an alias that has an owner- companion alias,
set the envelope sender address to the right-hand side of the
owner alias, instead using of the left-hand side address.
owner_request_special
Give special treatment to owner-listname and listname-request
addresses.
recipient_delimiter
Delimiter that separates recipients from address extensions.
BUGS
Regular expression alias lookup tables are allowed, but substitution of
$1 etc. is forbidden because that would open a security loophole.
STANDARDS
The Secure Mailer license must be distributed with this software.
AUTHOR(S)
Wietse Venema
IBM T.J. Watson Research
P.O. Box 704
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA
ALIASES(5)
Man(1) output converted with
man2html