NAME

masqmail.aliases - masqmail alias file format

DESCRIPTION

This man page describes the format of the masqmail alias file. It's usual location is /etc/aliases.

There exists also a variant of this format for glob patterns. It's used with the globalias_file config option.

The difference between the two formats are only on the left-hand side. A normal alias file has a local_part there that gets string-compared against the local part; whereas a glob alias file has a glob pattern that is matched against the whole address. The right-hand side of the two aliasing kinds has the same format.

FILE FORMAT

Normal alias files consist of lines of the form:

local_part: item1, item2, ...

Glob-pattern alias files consist of lines of the form:

glob_pattern: item1, item2, ...

Items can be surrounded by double quotes `"'. If within the quotes other quotes are needed for an address they can be escaped with a leading backslash `\'.

A leading backslash `\' indicates that this address shall not be further expanded.

A leading pipe symbol `|' indicates that the item shall be treated as a pipe command. The content of the message will then be sent to the standard input of the command. The command will run under the user id and group id masqmail is running as. If quotes are needed, the pipe symbol must appear within the quotes.

Loops will be detected, the offending address will be ignored.

Aliases will be expanded at delivery time. This means that if there is a message still in the queue and you change any alias which matches one of the recipient addresses, the change will have effect next time a delivery is attemped.

There is no need to restart masqmail or run any command when the alias file has been changed. (`masqmail -bi' is a no-op.)

EXAMPLE

A normal alias file:

# postmaster is required by RFC 2821
postmaster: root
# forward abuse mail to another address
abuse: abuse@example.org
# copy root's mail also to meillo
root: \root, meillo
# pass mail to a script
foo: |/usr/bin/foo

A glob-pattern alias file:

# the postmaster for any domain on this host
postmaster@*: ken
# split virtual domains
info@foo.example.org: doug
info@bar.example.org: rob
# the order of entries is important
# this must be before the catch-all line
list-*@example.org: |/path/to/some/script
# catch-all address forwarded to extern
*@example.org: brian@other.host.net

AUTHOR

Masqmail was written by Oliver Kurth. It is now maintained by Markus Schnalke <meillo@marmaro.de>.

You will find the newest version of masqmail at http://marmaro.de/prog/masqmail/. There is also a mailing list, you will find information about it at masqmail's main site.

BUGS