Installing and Administering Internet Services

Chapter 4 165
Installing and Administering sendmail
Creating sendmail Aliases
This command creates the aliases database, which is located in the
file /etc/mail/aliases.
Table 4-1 Things That May Be Included in a Mailing List
user_name A local user name will be looked up in the aliases database unless you
put a backslash (\) before it. To prevent sendmail from performing
unnecessary alias lookups, put backslashes before local user names.
Example:
local_users: \amy, \carrie, \sandy,
\anne,\david,\tony
remote_users: mike, denise
mike: [e-mail]
denise: bigvax!amlabs!denise
remote_address The remote address syntax that sendmail understands is configured
in the sendmail configuration file and usually includes RFC 822 style
addressing ( user @ domain ) and UUCP style addressing
( host ! user ). Example:
chess_club: [e-mail], marie@buffalo,
bigvax!amlabs!denise
filename An absolute pathname on the local machine. sendmail appends a
message to the file if the following conditions are true:
• The file exists, is not executable, and is writable by all.
• The directory where the file resides is readable and searchable by
all. Example:
public: /tmp/publicfile
terminal: /dev/tty
Mail addressed to public is appended to /tmp/publicfile. Mail
addressed to terminal appears on the sender’s terminal.