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Alias Files
smail is able to handle alias files compatible with those known by Berkeley's sendmail. Entries in the alias file may have the form
alias: recipients
recipients is a comma-separated list of addresses that will be
substituted for the alias. The recipient list may be continued across
newlines if the next line begins with a TAB.
There is a special feature that allows smail to handle mailing lists from the alias file: if you specify ``:include:filename'' as recipient, smail will read the file specified, and substitute its contents as a list of recipients.
The main aliases file is /usr/lib/aliases. If you choose to make this file world-writable, smail will not deliver any messages to shell commands given in this file. A sample file is shown below:
# vbrew.com /usr/lib/aliases file
hostmaster: janet
postmaster: janet
usenet: phil
# The development mailing list.
development: joe, sue, mark, biff
/var/mail/log/development
owner-development: joe
# Announcements of general interest are mailed to all
# of the staff
announce: :include: /usr/lib/smail/staff,
/var/mail/log/announce
owner-announce: root
# gate the foobar mailing list to a local newsgroup
ppp-list: "|/usr/local/lib/gateit local.lists.ppp"
If an error occurs while delivering to an address generated from the
aliases file, smail will attempt to send a copy of the
error message to the ``alias owner''. For example, if delivery to
biff fails when delivering a message to the development
mailing list, a copy of the error message will be mailed to the sender,
as well as to postmaster and owner-development. If the
owner address does not exist, no additional error message will be
generated.
When delivering to files or when invoking programs given in the
aliases file, smail will become the nobody user to
avoid any security hassles. Especially when delivering to files, this
can be a real nuisance. In the file given above, for instance, the log
files must be owned and writable by nobody, or delivery to them
will fail.
Andrew Anderson
Thu Mar 7 23:22:06 EST 1996