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SENDMAIL(8)
NAME
sendmail - an electronic mail transport agent
SYNOPSIS
sendmail [flags] [address ...]
newaliases
mailq [-v]
hoststat
purgestat
smtpd
DESCRIPTION
Sendmail sends a message to one or more recipients, routing the message
over whatever networks are necessary. Sendmail does internetwork
forwarding as necessary to deliver the message to the correct place.
Sendmail is not intended as a user interface routine; other programs
provide user-friendly front ends; sendmail is used only to deliver pre-
formatted messages.
With no flags, sendmail reads its standard input up to an end-of-file or a
line consisting only of a single dot and sends a copy of the message found
there to all of the addresses listed. It determines the network(s) to use
based on the syntax and contents of the addresses.
Local addresses are looked up in a file and aliased appropriately.
Aliasing can be prevented by preceding the address with a backslash.
Beginning with 8.10, the sender is included in any alias expansions, e.g.,
if `john' sends to `group', and `group' includes `john' in the expansion,
then the letter will also be delivered to `john'.
Parameters
-Ac Use submit.cf even if the operation mode does not indicate an initial
mail submission.
-Am Use sendmail.cf even if the operation mode indicates an initial mail
submission.
-Btype
Set the body type to type. Current legal values are 7BIT or 8BITMIME.
-ba Go into ARPANET mode. All input lines must end with a CR-LF, and all
messages will be generated with a CR-LF at the end. Also, the
``From:'' and ``Sender:'' fields are examined for the name of the
sender.
-bd Run as a daemon. Sendmail will fork and run in background listening
on socket 25 for incoming SMTP connections. This is normally run from
/etc/rc.
-bD Same as -bd except runs in foreground.
-bh Print the persistent host status database.
-bH Purge expired entries from the persistent host status database.
-bi Initialize the alias database.
-bm Deliver mail in the usual way (default).
-bp Print a listing of the queue(s).
-bP Print number of entries in the queue(s); only available with shared
memory support.
-bs Use the SMTP protocol as described in RFC821 on standard input and
output. This flag implies all the operations of the -ba flag that are
compatible with SMTP.
-bt Run in address test mode. This mode reads addresses and shows the
steps in parsing; it is used for debugging configuration tables.
-bv Verify names only - do not try to collect or deliver a message.
Verify mode is normally used for validating users or mailing lists.
-Cfile
Use alternate configuration file. Sendmail gives up any enhanced
(set-user-ID or set-group-ID) privileges if an alternate configuration
file is specified.
-D logfile
Send debugging output to the indicated log file instead of stdout.
-dcategory.level...
Set the debugging flag for category to level. Category is either an
integer or a name specifying the topic, and level an integer
specifying the level of debugging output desired. Higher levels
generally mean more output. More than one flag can be specified by
separating them with commas. A list of numeric debugging categories
can be found in the TRACEFLAGS file in the sendmail source
distribution.
The option -d0.1 prints the version of sendmail and the options it was
compiled with.
Most other categories are only useful with, and documented in,
sendmail's source code.
-Ffullname
Set the full name of the sender.
-fname
Sets the name of the ``from'' person (i.e., the envelope sender of the
mail). This address may also be used in the From: header if that
header is missing during initial submission. The envelope sender
address is used as the recipient for delivery status notifications and
may also appear in a Return-Path: header. -f should only be used by
``trusted'' users (normally root, daemon, and network) or if the
person you are trying to become is the same as the person you are.
Otherwise, an X-Authentication-Warning header will be added to the
message.
-G Relay (gateway) submission of a message, e.g., when rmail calls
sendmail .
-hN Set the hop count to N. The hop count is incremented every time the
mail is processed. When it reaches a limit, the mail is returned with
an error message, the victim of an aliasing loop. If not specified,
``Received:'' lines in the message are counted.
-i Ignore dots alone on lines by themselves in incoming messages. This
should be set if you are reading data from a file.
-L tag
Set the identifier used in syslog messages to the supplied tag.
-N dsn
Set delivery status notification conditions to dsn, which can be
`never' for no notifications or a comma separated list of the values
`failure' to be notified if delivery failed, `delay' to be notified if
delivery is delayed, and `success' to be notified when the message is
successfully delivered.
-n Don't do aliasing.
-O option=value
Set option option to the specified value. This form uses long names.
See below for more details.
-ox value
Set option x to the specified value. This form uses single character
names only. The short names are not described in this manual page; see
the Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide for details.
-pprotocol
Set the name of the protocol used to receive the message. This can be
a simple protocol name such as ``UUCP'' or a protocol and hostname,
such as ``UUCP:ucbvax''.
-q[time]
Process saved messages in the queue at given intervals. If time is
omitted, process the queue once. Time is given as a tagged number,
with `s' being seconds, `m' being minutes (default), `h' being hours,
`d' being days, and `w' being weeks. For example, `-q1h30m' or
`-q90m' would both set the timeout to one hour thirty minutes. By
default, sendmail will run in the background. This option can be used
safely with -bd.
-qp[time]
Similar to -qtime, except that instead of periodically forking a child
to process the queue, sendmail forks a single persistent child for
each queue that alternates between processing the queue and sleeping.
The sleep time is given as the argument; it defaults to 1 second. The
process will always sleep at least 5 seconds if the queue was empty in
the previous queue run.
-qf Process saved messages in the queue once and do not fork(), but run in
the foreground.
-qG name
Process jobs in queue group called name only.
-q[!]Isubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing substr as a substring of the
queue id or not when ! is specified.
-q[!]Qsubstr
Limit processed jobs to quarantined jobs containing substr as a
substring of the quarantine reason or not when ! is specified.
-q[!]Rsubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing substr as a substring of one
of the recipients or not when ! is specified.
-q[!]Ssubstr
Limit processed jobs to those containing substr as a substring of the
sender or not when ! is specified.
-Q[reason]
Quarantine a normal queue items with the given reason or unquarantine
quarantined queue items if no reason is given. This should only be
used with some sort of item matching using as described above.
-R return
Set the amount of the message to be returned if the message bounces.
The return parameter can be `full' to return the entire message or
`hdrs' to return only the headers. In the latter case also local
bounces return only the headers.
-rname
An alternate and obsolete form of the -f flag.
-t Read message for recipients. To:, Cc:, and Bcc: lines will be scanned
for recipient addresses. The Bcc: line will be deleted before
transmission.
-V envid
Set the original envelope id. This is propagated across SMTP to
servers that support DSNs and is returned in DSN-compliant error
messages.
-v Go into verbose mode. Alias expansions will be announced, etc.
-X logfile
Log all traffic in and out of mailers in the indicated log file. This
should only be used as a last resort for debugging mailer bugs. It
will log a lot of data very quickly.
-- Stop processing command flags and use the rest of the arguments as
addresses.
Options
There are also a number of processing options that may be set. Normally
these will only be used by a system administrator. Options may be set
either on the command line using the -o flag (for short names), the -O flag
(for long names), or in the configuration file. This is a partial list
limited to those options that are likely to be useful on the command line
and only shows the long names; for a complete list (and details), consult
the Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide. The options are:
AliasFile=file
Use alternate alias file.
HoldExpensive
On mailers that are considered ``expensive'' to connect to, don't
initiate immediate connection. This requires queueing.
CheckpointInterval=N
Checkpoint the queue file after every N successful deliveries (default
10). This avoids excessive duplicate deliveries when sending to long
mailing lists interrupted by system crashes.
DeliveryMode=x
Set the delivery mode to x. Delivery modes are `i' for interactive
(synchronous) delivery, `b' for background (asynchronous) delivery,
`q' for queue only - i.e., actual delivery is done the next time the
queue is run, and `d' for deferred - the same as `q' except that
database lookups for maps which have set the -D option (default for
the host map) are avoided.
ErrorMode=x
Set error processing to mode x. Valid modes are `m' to mail back the
error message, `w' to ``write'' back the error message (or mail it
back if the sender is not logged in), `p' to print the errors on the
terminal (default), `q' to throw away error messages (only exit status
is returned), and `e' to do special processing for the BerkNet. If the
text of the message is not mailed back by modes `m' or `w' and if the
sender is local to this machine, a copy of the message is appended to
the file dead.letter in the sender's home directory.
SaveFromLine
Save UNIX-style From lines at the front of messages.
MaxHopCount=N
The maximum number of times a message is allowed to ``hop'' before we
decide it is in a loop.
IgnoreDots
Do not take dots on a line by themselves as a message terminator.
SendMimeErrors
Send error messages in MIME format. If not set, the DSN (Delivery
Status Notification) SMTP extension is disabled.
ConnectionCacheTimeout=timeout
Set connection cache timeout.
ConnectionCacheSize=N
Set connection cache size.
LogLevel=n
The log level.
MeToo=False
Don't send to ``me'' (the sender) if I am in an alias expansion.
CheckAliases
Validate the right hand side of aliases during a newaliases(1)
command.
OldStyleHeaders
If set, this message may have old style headers. If not set, this
message is guaranteed to have new style headers (i.e., commas instead
of spaces between addresses). If set, an adaptive algorithm is used
that will correctly determine the header format in most cases.
QueueDirectory=queuedir
Select the directory in which to queue messages.
StatusFile=file
Save statistics in the named file.
Timeout.queuereturn=time
Set the timeout on undelivered messages in the queue to the specified
time. After delivery has failed (e.g., because of a host being down)
for this amount of time, failed messages will be returned to the
sender. The default is five days.
UserDatabaseSpec=userdatabase
If set, a user database is consulted to get forwarding information.
You can consider this an adjunct to the aliasing mechanism, except
that the database is intended to be distributed; aliases are local to
a particular host. This may not be available if your sendmail does not
have the USERDB option compiled in.
ForkEachJob
Fork each job during queue runs. May be convenient on memory-poor
machines.
SevenBitInput
Strip incoming messages to seven bits.
EightBitMode=mode
Set the handling of eight bit input to seven bit destinations to mode:
m (mimefy) will convert to seven-bit MIME format, p (pass) will pass
it as eight bits (but violates protocols), and s (strict) will bounce
the message.
MinQueueAge=timeout
Sets how long a job must ferment in the queue between attempts to send
it.
DefaultCharSet=charset
Sets the default character set used to label 8-bit data that is not
otherwise labelled.
DialDelay=sleeptime
If opening a connection fails, sleep for sleeptime seconds and try
again. Useful on dial-on-demand sites.
NoRecipientAction=action
Set the behaviour when there are no recipient headers (To:, Cc: or
Bcc:) in the message to action: none leaves the message unchanged,
add-to adds a To: header with the envelope recipients, add-
apparently-to adds an Apparently-To: header with the envelope
recipients, add-bcc adds an empty Bcc: header, and add-to-undisclosed
adds a header reading `To: undisclosed-recipients:;'.
MaxDaemonChildren=N
Sets the maximum number of children that an incoming SMTP daemon will
allow to spawn at any time to N.
ConnectionRateThrottle=N
Sets the maximum number of connections per second to the SMTP port to
N.
In aliases, the first character of a name may be a vertical bar to cause
interpretation of the rest of the name as a command to pipe the mail to. It
may be necessary to quote the name to keep sendmail from suppressing the
blanks from between arguments. For example, a common alias is:
msgs: "|/usr/bin/msgs -s"
Aliases may also have the syntax ``:include:filename'' to ask sendmail to
read the named file for a list of recipients. For example, an alias such
as:
poets: ":include:/usr/local/lib/poets.list"
would read /usr/local/lib/poets.list for the list of addresses making up
the group.
Sendmail returns an exit status describing what it did. The codes are
defined in <sysexits.h>:
EX_OK
Successful completion on all addresses.
EX_NOUSER
User name not recognized.
EX_UNAVAILABLE
Catchall meaning necessary resources were not available.
EX_SYNTAX
Syntax error in address.
EX_SOFTWARE
Internal software error, including bad arguments.
EX_OSERR
Temporary operating system error, such as ``cannot fork''.
EX_NOHOST
Host name not recognized.
EX_TEMPFAIL
Message could not be sent immediately, but was queued.
If invoked as newaliases, sendmail will rebuild the alias database. If
invoked as mailq, sendmail will print the contents of the mail queue. If
invoked as hoststat, sendmail will print the persistent host status
database. If invoked as purgestat, sendmail will purge expired entries
from the persistent host status database. If invoked as smtpd, sendmail
will act as a daemon, as if the -bd option were specified.
NOTES
sendmail often gets blamed for many problems that are actually the result
of other problems, such as overly permissive modes on directories. For
this reason, sendmail checks the modes on system directories and files to
determine if they can be trusted. Although these checks can be turned off
and your system security reduced by setting the DontBlameSendmail option,
the permission problems should be fixed. For more information, see:
http://www.sendmail.org/tips/DontBlameSendmail.html
FILES
Except for the file /etc/mail/sendmail.cf itself the following pathnames
are all specified in /etc/mail/sendmail.cf. Thus, these values are only
approximations.
/etc/mail/aliases
raw data for alias names
/etc/mail/aliases.db
data base of alias names
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf
configuration file
/etc/mail/helpfile
help file
/etc/mail/statistics
collected statistics
/var/spool/mqueue/*
temp files
SEE ALSO
binmail(1), mail(1), rmail(1), syslog(3), aliases(5), mailaddr(7), rc(8)
DARPA Internet Request For Comments RFC819, RFC821, RFC822. Sendmail
Installation and Operation Guide, No. 8, SMM.
http://www.sendmail.org/
HISTORY
The sendmail command appeared in 4.2BSD.
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