ALIASES(5)                      UNIX      Programmer's     Manual
ALIASES(5)

NAME
     aliases - aliases file for sendmail

SYNOPSIS
     aliases

DESCRIPTION
     This   file   describes   user   ID    aliases    used    by
/usr/sbin/sendmail. The file
     resides in /etc and is formatted as a series of lines of the
form

           name: name_1, name2, name_3, . . .

     The name is the name to alias, and the name_n are the alias-
es for that
     name.   Lines  beginning  with  white space are continuation
lines.  Lines
     beginning with `#' are comments.

     Aliasing occurs only on local names.  Loops can  not  occur,
since no mes-
     sage will be sent to any person more than once.

     After aliasing has been done, local and valid recipients who
have a
     ``.forward'' file in their home directory have messages for-
warded to the
     list of users defined in that file.

     This is only the raw data file; the actual aliasing informa-
tion is placed
     into a binary format in the file /etc/aliases.db  using  the
program
     newaliases(1).  A newaliases command should be executed each
time the
     aliases file is changed for the change to take effect.

SEE ALSO
     newaliases(1),  dbopen(3),  dbm(3),  sendmail(8)

     SENDMAIL Installation and Operation Guide.

     SENDMAIL An Internetwork Mail Router.

BUGS
     If you have compiled sendmail with DBM  support  instead  of
NEWDB, you may
     have  encountered  problems  in  dbm(3) restricting a single
alias to about
     1000 bytes of information.  You can get  longer  aliases  by
``chaining'';
     that  is,  make  the  last name in the alias be a dummy name
which is a con-
     tinuation alias.

HISTORY
     The aliases file format appeared in 4.0BSD.

4th     Berkeley     Distribution            May     19,     1998
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