aliases(5)

NAME

     aliases --- aliases file for smtpd

DESCRIPTION

     This manual page describes the format of the aliases file, as used by
     smtpd(8).  An alias in its simplest form is used to assign an arbitrary
     name to an email address, or a group of email addresses.  This provides a
     convenient way to send mail.  For example an alias could refer to all
     users of a group: email to that alias would be sent to all members of the
     group.  Much more complex aliases can be defined however: an alias can
     refer to other aliases, be used to send mail to a file instead of another
     person, or to execute various commands.

     Within the file, '#' is a comment delimiter; anything placed after it is
     discarded.  The file consists of key/value mappings of the form:

       key: value1, value2, value3, ...

     key is always folded to lowercase before alias lookups to ensure that
     there can be no ambiguity.  The key is expanded to the corresponding
     values, which consist of one or more of the following:

     user    A user on the host machine.  The user must have a valid entry in
         the passwd(5) database file.

     /path/to/file
         Append messages to file, specified by its absolute pathname.

     |command
         Pipe the message to command on its standard input.  The command
         is run under the privileges of the daemon's unprivileged account.

     :include:/path/to/file
         Include any definitions in file as alias entries.  The format of
         the file is identical to this one.

     user-part@domain-part
         An email address in RFC 5322 format (see mailaddr(7)).  If an
         address extension is appended to the user-part, it is first
         compared for an exact match.  It is then stripped so that an
         address such as user+ext@example.com will only use the part that
         precedes '+' as a key.

     error:code message
         A status code and message to return.  The code must be 3 digits,
         starting 4XX (TempFail) or 5XX (PermFail).  The message must be
         present and can be freely chosen.

     maildir:/path
         Deliver messages to Maildir at the path.

FILES

     /etc/aliases     Default aliases file.

SEE ALSO

     smtpd.conf(5), makemap(8), newaliases(8), smtpd(8)

HISTORY

     The aliases file format appeared in 4.0BSD.

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