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NAMEsendmail — send mail over the Internet SYNOPSIS/usr/sbin/sendmail
[mode]
[flags]
[address
...] DESCRIPTIONsendmail
sends a message to one or more
recipients
or
addresses,
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
specified in the command line,
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
in the command line.
It determines the network(s) to use
based on the syntax and contents of the addresses,
according to information in the
sendmail
configuration file.
The default configuration file is
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf. 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.
For example,
if `john' sends to `group',
and `group' includes `john' in the expansion,
then the letter will not be delivered to `john'. If
newaliases
is invoked,
sendmail
will rebuild the alias database.
newaliases
is identical to
sendmail -bi.
See
newaliases(1M).
Mail that is temporarily undeliverable is saved in a mail queue.
If
mailq
is invoked,
sendmail
will print the contents of the mail queue.
The mail queue files are in the directory
/var/spool/mqueue.
mailq
is identical to
sendmail -bp.
See
mailq(1). Argumentssendmail
recognizes the following arguments:
- mode
A mode selected from those described in the "Modes" subsection below.
Only one mode can be specified.
The default is
-bm. - address
The address of a recipient.
Several addresses can be specified. - flags
A flag selected from those described in the "Flags" subsection below.
Several flags can be specified.
Modessendmail
operates in one of the following modes.
The default is
-bm,
deliver mail in the usual way.
- -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.
sendmail
will fork and run in background
listening on socket 25 for incoming
SMTP connections. - -bD
Run as a daemon, but run in foreground. - -bh
Print the persistent host status database. - -bH
Purge the persistent host status database. - -bi
Initialize the alias database
for the mail aliases file.
newaliases
is identical to
sendmail -bi.
See
newaliases(1M). - -bm
Deliver mail in the usual way (default). - -bp
Print a listing of the mail queue.
mailq
is identical to
sendmail -bp.
See
mailq(1). - -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.
Flagssendmail
recognizes the following flags:
- -Btype
Set the body type,
7BIT or 8BITMIME. - -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) to
name.
If the user of the
-f
option is not a ``trusted'' user
(normally
root,
daemon,
and
network)
and if the
name
set using the
-f
option and the login name of the person actually sending the mail
are not the same, it results in an
X-Authentication-Warning
in the mail header. - -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. - -i
Ignore dots alone on lines by themselves in incoming messages. This should be set if you are reading from a file. - -n
Do not do aliasing. - -Ndsn
Set delivery status notification conditions. The valid conditions with which
dsn
can be set are as follows:
- never
For no notifications. - failure
If delivery failed. - delay
If delivery is delayed. - success
When message is successfully delivered.
- -Ooption=value
Set option
option
to a specified
value.
Options are described below in ""Processing Options." - -ox=value
Set option
x
to the specified
value.
Options are described below
in "Processing Options." - -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''. - -qtime
Process 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. - -qIsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing
substr
as a substring of the queue id. - -qRsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing
substr
as a substring of one of the recipients. - -qSsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing
substr
as a substring of the sender. - -rname
An alternate and obsolete form of the
f
flag. - -Rreturn
Set the amount of the message to be returned if the message bounces.
The values that can be set for
return
are as follows:
- full
To return the entire message - hdrs
To return only the headers.
- -t
Read message for recipients.
To:, Cc:, and Bcc: lines will be scanned for recipient addresses.
The Bcc: line will be deleted before transmission. - -U
Initial (user) submission. This flag should always be set when
sendmail
is called
from a user agent such as
mail
or
elm.
This flag should never be set when called from a network delivery agent such as
rmail. - -v
Go into verbose mode.
Alias expansions will be announced, etc. - -Venvid
Set the original envelope identification. This is propagated across SMTP to servers that support
DSN's
(delivery status notification)
and is returned in DSN-compliant error messages. - -Xlogfile
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. - --
Stop processing command flags and use the rest of the arguments
as addresses.
Processing OptionsThere 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,
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf.
The options are:
- AliasFile=file
Use alternate alias file. - HoldExpensive
On mailers that are considered ``expensive'' to connect to,
do not initiate immediate connection.
This requires queuing. - CheckpointInterval=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. - DeliveryMode=x
Set the delivery mode to
x.
Delivery modes are
- i
interactive (synchronous) delivery. - b
background (asynchronous) delivery. - q
queue only; expect the messages to be delivered
the next time that the queue is run. - d
deferred; the same as
q
except that database lookups
(DNS and NIS lookups) are avoided.
- ErrorMode=x
Set error processing to mode
x.
Valid modes are
- m
mail back the error message. - w
``write'' back the error message
(or mail it back if the sender is not logged in). - p
print the errors on the terminal
(default). - q
throw away error messages
(only exit status is returned). - e
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. - SaveFromLine
Save UNIX -style
From lines at the front of messages. - MaxHopCount=N
The maximum number of times a message is allowed to ``hop''
before it is considered in a loop. - IgnoreDots
Do not take dots on a line by themselves
as a message terminator. - SendMimeErrors
Send error messages in MIME format. - ConnectionCacheTimeOut=timeout
Set connection cache timeout. - ConnectionCacheSize=N
Set connection cache size. - Loglevel=n
The log level. - MeToo
Send to ``me'' (the sender) also if the sender is in an alias expansion. - CheckAliases
Validate the right hand side of aliases during a
newaliases
command. See
newaliases(1M). - OldStyleheaders
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. - QueueDirectory=queuedir
Select the directory in which to queue messages. - StatusFile=file
Save statistics in the named file. - Timeout.queuereturn=time
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, the
failed messages will be returned to the sender.
The default is three days. - UserDatabaseSpec=userdatabase
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. - ForkEachJob
Fork each job during queue runs.
May be convenient on memory-poor machines. - SevenBitInput
Strip incoming messages to seven bits. - EightBitMode=mode
Set the handling of eight bit input to seven bit destinations. Mode can be
set to the following values
- m
Convert to seven-bit MIME format. - p
Pass it as eight bits. - s
Bounce the mail.
- MInQueueAge=timeout
Sets how long a job must ferment in the queue in between attempts to send it. - DefaultCharSet=charset
Sets the default character set used to label 8-bit data that is not otherwise labeled. - DialDelay=sleeptime
If opening a connection fails, sleep for sleeptime seconds and try again.
Useful on dial-on-demand sites. - NoRecipientAction=action
Set the behaviour when there are no recipient headers (To:, Cc: or Bcc:) in message to action.
The different values that can be set for action are
- none
Leaves the message unchanged. - add-to
Adds a
To:
header with the envelope recipients. - add-apparently-to
Adds an
Apparently-To:
header with the envelope recipients. - add-bcc
Adds an empty
Bcc: - add-to-undisclosed
Adds a header reading
To:undisclosed-recipients:
- MaxDaemonChildren=N
Sets the maximum number of children that an incoming SMTP daemon will allow to spawn at any time to
N. - ConnectionRateThrottle=N
Sets the maximum number of connections per second to the SMTP port to
N.
header.
AliasesYou can set up system aliases and user forwarding.
The
alias
and
.forward
files are described in the
aliases(5)
manpage. EXIT STATUSsendmail
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.
AUTHORThe
sendmail
command was developed by the University of California, Berkeley,
and originally appeared in BSD 4.2.
This version of HP-UX
sendmail
originally came from
sendmail 8.7.1. FILES- $HOME/.forward
User's mail forwarding file - $HOME/dead.letter
User's failed message file
Except for the
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf
file and the daemon process ID file,
the below mentioned default pathnames are all specified in
the configuration file,
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf.
These default file names can be overridden in
the configuration file. - /etc/mail/aliases
raw data for alias names - /etc/mail/aliases.db
data base of alias names - /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
configuration file - /usr/share/lib/sendmail.hf
help file - /etc/mail/sendmail.st
collected statistics - /var/spool/mqueue/*
mail queue files - /etc/mail/sendmail.pid
The process id of the daemon - /etc/mail/sendmail.cw
The list of all hostnames that are recognized as
local, which causes sendmail to accept mail for these
hosts and attempt local delivery - /etc/nsswitch.conf
configuration file for the name-service switch
SEE ALSOaliases(5),
convert_awk(1M),
elm(1),
expand_alias(1),
identd(1M),
idlookup(1),
killsm(1M),
mail(1),
mailq(1),
mailstats(1),
mailx(1),
mtail(1M),
newaliases(1M),
praliases(1),
smrsh(1M).
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