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MAKEALIASES(8)		    Double Precision, Inc.		MAKEALIASES(8)

NAME
       makealiases - Create an alias database

SYNOPSIS
       makealiases [-protocol=protocol] [-alias=filename] [-src=pathname]
		   [-tmp=filename] [-chk] [-dump] [module]

DESCRIPTION
       The Courier mail server´s /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases.dat file is a
       unified implementation of sendmail-style address aliasing, qmail-style
       virtual domains, plus several Courier mail server-style enhancements.

       The term aliasing refers to substituting one or more addresses for
       another address. A one-to-one substitution results in the Courier mail
       server accepting mail for one address, and delivering the mail to
       another address. A one-to-many substitution results in the Courier mail
       server accepting mail for one address, and delivering a separate copy
       of the message to every address defined by the alias.

       /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases.dat is a binary database file.
       makealiases creates the binary database file by reading the aliases
       from plain text files, and makealiases creates
       /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases.dat by default.

       makealiases creates /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases.dat from one or more
       source files, which are plain text files that may be created by any
       text editor. The format of those source files is defined below. By
       default, makealiases obtains the source text from
       /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases. If this is a text file, it is used
       verbatim. If this is a directory (the Courier mail server creates it as
       a directory by default), all the non-hidden files in this directory are
       concatenated together.

OPTIONS
       -alias=filename
	   Create filename, instead of /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases.dat.

       -chk
	   Try to search for bad addresses used in the aliases.dat file. This
	   option takes some time to complete. It does not create an
	   aliases.dat file, but instead tries to check every address
	   specified by the source text file. Why is this necessary? That´s
	   because non-delivery reports will not be sent to the sender for
	   failures in delivering mail to an aliased address. This is by
	   design. the Courier mail server considers aliases to be private
	   mailing lists. Because non-delivery notices are not sent, bad
	   addresses will not be immediately detected.

	       Note
	       The -chk option is really effective for addresses which are
	       local, because there is no real way to determine if a remote
	       mail address is valid.

       -dump
	   Do not create aliases.dat, instead display the contents of the
	   alias database, in plain text form. The contents will be the
	   combined contents of all the source files, with all addresses
	   converted to canonical format, with duplicates removed and
	   sub-aliases expanded.

       -src=pathname
	   Use pathname instead of /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases as the
	   source file.	 pathname can also refer to a directory. This
	   concatenates every non-hidden file in the directory.

       -tmp=filename
	   Use filename as a temporary file, instead of
	   /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases.tmp.	makealiases requires a
	   temporary file for its own purposes, which is automatically removed
	   when done. This temporary file MUST reside on the same filesystem
	   as aliases.dat. If the -alias option specifies a file on a
	   different filesystem, use this option to specify where to temporary
	   place a file in the same filesystem. Because makealiases always
	   uses the same name for a temporary file you cannot run more than
	   one makealiases process at the same time.

       -protocol=protocol
	   Use an alias list that´s private to messages coming from protocol.
	   See below.

       The optional module specifies the module whose rewriting rules are used
       to convert E-mail addresses into a canonical form. If not specified,
       the local module´s address rewriting rules will be used.

PROTOCOL ALIASES
       Addresses in /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases.dat will be checked in
       every message. Use the -protocol option to create aliases that will be
       checked only for message that are received via a specific protocol,
       such as ESMTP, UUCP, or locally-generated mail. This allows you, for
       example, to create an alias such as "everyone", which is only avaliable
       to locally generated mail, and does not work for mail received via
       ESMTP. The argument to the -protocol option is one of: esmtp, uucp, or
       local.

       Protocol-specific alias files are
       /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases-protocol.dat, where "protocol" is the
       specific protocol, such as "local", "esmtp", or "uucp", and the source
       file read by makealiases would be
       /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases-protocol. If the -protocol option is
       specified, makealiases will access these files instead of
       /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases.dat and /usr/local/etc/courier/aliases.

ALIAS SPECIFICATIONS
       The sources file used to create the binary aliases.dat database are
       plain text files that may be created using any editor.

       Each alias specification takes the following form:

	   alias: address1, address2, ...

       Mail received by the Courier mail server addressed to alias will be
       delivered to the list of addresses specified. The list of addresses may
       be split across multiple lines, if the second and subsequent line
       starts with a space character.

       Lines starting with the # character are ignored, they are comments.

       alias is not restricted to be a local address. It may be any valid RFC
       2822[1] address. All addresses do not necessary have to be in a
       canonical form.

	   alias: :include:/absolute/pathname

       This notation reads the list of addresses from another file,
       /absolute/pathname. This file should contain one address per line
       (comma separated addresses on the same line will also work).

	   Note
	   If alias refers to a local, existing, account, this account will
	   never get any mail. Any mail with the account listed as recipient
	   will be redirected to all the addresses specified for that alias.
	   To have a copy of the mail delivered to the account, define it as
	   one of the addresses in the alias itself. For example:

	       larry: larry, moe, curly, shemp

	   Larry will still receive his mail, but copies will will also be
	   sent to Moe, Curly, and Shemp. If Larry wasn´t specified in the
	   alias, he would never get any mail, it will all be forwarded to
	   Moe, Curly, and Shemp.

DUPLICATE ADDRESSES
       Alias definitions may refer to other alias definitions, and makealiases
       automatically incorporates addresses from other aliases. If the same
       address is listed in multiple aliases, and two or more of them are
       specified as recipients of the same message, only one copy of the
       message will be delivered to the address.

VIRTUAL DOMAINS
       The following special syntax implements a virtual domain. A virtual
       domain redirects all mail for an entire domain to one user:

	   @domain: user

       This special entry results in any recipient address of the form
       foo@domain to be rewritten as user-foo@me, where me is the hostname of
       the machine, which we expect to be a local domain.

       The following examples use the alias entry "@example.com: john", and
       "domain.com" is in the control/me file. The address
       "postmaster@example.com" becomes "john-postmaster@domain.com", and
       "sales-info@example.com" becomes "john-sales-info@domain.com".

       The intended behavior is to use an actual account named john. As a
       result of the virtual domain address rewriting, delivery instructions
       for postmaster@example.com can now be specified by john´s
       $HOME/.courier-postmaster file, and delivery instructions for
       sales-info@example.com may be specified by $HOME/.courier-sales-info.
       john´s $HOME/.courier-default may be used to specify delivery
       instructions for any other address in the example.com domain, which
       does not have an explicit .courier file.

       If the alias entry was "@example.com: john-example", the corresponding
       files in john´s $HOME directory are .courier-example-postmaster,
       .courier-example-sales-info, and .courier-example-default. See dot-
       courier(5)[2] for more information on .courier files.

	   Note
	   Virtual domain rewriting is NOT recursive, unlike regular aliases.
	   For example:

	       tom: john@example.com
	       @example.com: larry

	   You should explicitly expand the alias out:

	       tom: larry-john

PROGRAM OR MAILBOX ALIASES
       The following notation associates an address directly with a mailbox,
       or with a program:

	   info: /var/shared/info

       Messages addressed to "info" will be delivered to the mailbox or
       maildir /var/shared/info. A full pathname must be specified.

	   info: | /usr/local/shared/info

       Mail addressed to "info" will be delivered to the indicated program.
       The program receives each message on standard input.

       Program/mailbox delivery notation is primarily used to support legacy
       sendmail aliases entries. This is considered to be a legacy feature,
       and new installations should create a dot-courier(5)[2] file with the
       necessary delivery instructions. In fact, aliases for programs or
       mailboxes is not directly supported by the Courier mail server´s
       aliasing mechanisms. It´s implemented by having the makealiases script
       automatically create a .courier file, and point the alias address to
       it.

       See dot-courier(5)[2] for more information.

	   Note
	   Unlike sendmail, the Courier mail server delivers as user "courier"
	   (group courier) when delivering to programs or mailboxes.

UUCP VIRTUAL DOMAINS
       The following notation allows mail addressed to a certain domain to be
       forwarded via uucp:

	   @domain: uucp!bang!path!

       The trailing !  tells the Courier mail server not to append a dash, so
       user@domain gets rewritten as uucp!bang!path!user, and not
       uucp!bang!path-user, which is probably not what you want.

DELIVERY STATUS NOTIFICATIONS
       An alias with only one address does not affect delivery status
       notification attributes of an E-mail message.

       An alias with multiple addresses is treated like a private mailing
       list, as defined by RFC 1894[3]. If the message requests a successful
       delivery notification, the Courier mail server generates a delivery
       status notification for the successful delivery to the aliased address,
       and each alias recipient address will have DSNs set to NEVER.

BUGS
       This has nothing to do with the Courier mail server´s support for a
       Qmail-style alias account.

       owner-foo feature of sendmail´s aliasing is not supported.

       the Courier mail server normally tries to eliminate duplicate addresses
       listed as recipients for the same message. Some mail servers are not
       capable of delivering messages with multiple recipients, and will
       transmit a separate copy of the same message addressed to each
       recipient. The Courier mail server can´t do anything in this case. Each
       copy of the same original text is considered an individual, separate,
       message.

       Duplicate elimination can fail in certain rare circumstances, involving
       exotic features of RFC 2822[1] concerning case sensitivity.

       "@example.com: jack, jill" is allowed, but strongly discouraged under
       the penalty of law.

       Because multiple-recipient aliases are treated like private mailing
       lists, failure DSNs are turned off, and a bad recipient address is
       hardly noticed by anyone.

       The makealiases command may execute while the Courier mail server is
       running, and any changes take effect immediately. However, only one
       instance of makealiases is permitted to run at the same time.

SEE ALSO
       esmtpd(8)[4].

AUTHOR
       Sam Varshavchik
	   Author

NOTES
	1. RFC 2822
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc822.txt

	2. dot-courier(5)
	   [set $man.base.url.for.relative.links]/dot-courier.html

	3. RFC 1894
	   http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1894.txt

	4. esmtpd(8)
	   [set $man.base.url.for.relative.links]/esmtpd.html

Courier Mail Server		  02/10/2011			MAKEALIASES(8)
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