jane@ames.UUCP (Jane Medefesser) (01/14/86)
I have a general question about sendmail. We have sendmail running on our sysV.2 systems. I would like to know if each user could do aliasing from a .mailrc file INSTEAD of putting it in the system alias file. I am not interested in putting one into the .cshrc file, as many of our users are running bourne shell, not cshell. If anyone has tryed this and got to to work/not to work, I would really be interested in their experiences. Please send mail directly to me. Thanks in advance!!! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- #include <disclaimer.h> Jane Medefesser Informatics General Corp. Palo Alto, California {..dual,riacs,hplabs,ihnp4}!ames!jane
guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris) (01/16/86)
> I have a general question about sendmail. We have sendmail running on our > sysV.2 systems. I would like to know if each user could do aliasing from a > .mailrc file INSTEAD of putting it in the system alias file. I am not > interested in putting one into the .cshrc file, as many of our users are > running bourne shell, not cshell. Unfortunately, the term "aliasing" has at least 3 different meanings. The first is aliasing done by "sendmail"; this is specified in the "/usr/lib/aliases" file. You can also do forwarding; if a user has a file called ".forward" in their home directory, all mail to them is instead sent to the list of addresses given in that file, just as if their name had been an alias for the text in that file. The second is aliasing done by Mail, which is the program that reads .mailrc ("sendmail" does not look at .mailrc files). Any aliases put into .mailrc apply to all mail sent out by that user. However, there is a small difference. If my /usr/lib/aliases file has the alias list: user1,user2,user3 and I send to "list", the mail will get delivered to users "user1", "user2", and "user3" (which can be any addresses, including users on other machines, aliases in /usr/lib/aliases, and programs or files), but the "To:" line will read To: list However, if my .mailrc has the alias alias list user1,user2,user3 and I send to "list", the mail will still get delivered to users "user1", "user2", and "user3" (which can be any addresses which Mail - not "sendmail" - recognizes), bu the "To:" line will read To: user1, user2, user3 The two forms of aliasing are done at different times, and by different programs; aliases in "/usr/lib/aliases" are expanded by "sendmail", and aliases in ".mailrc" are expanded by "Mail". So the strict answer is "no, 'sendmail' aliasing can't be done in '.mailrc', but yes, you can do aliasing in '.mailrc'." The third one (I am presuming by your reference to .cshrc) is C shell command aliasing, which has nothing to do with mail; it just happens also to be called "aliasing". Guy Harris