ALIASES(5)                           BSD                            ALIASES(5)



NAME
     aliases - aliases file for sendmail

SYNOPSIS
     /usr/lib/aliases

DESCRIPTION
     This file describes user ID aliases used by /usr/lib/sendmail.  It is
     made up of an arbitrary number of lines of the form
          name: name_1, name2, name_3, . . .
     The name is the name to alias, and the name_n are the aliases for that
     name.  Lines beginning with white space are continuation lines.  Lines
     beginning with # are comments.

     Aliasing occurs only on local names.  Loops cannot occur, since no
     message will be sent to any person more than once.

     After aliasing has been done, local and valid recipients who have a
     ".forward" file in their home directory have messages forwarded to the
     list of users defined in that file.

     This is only the raw data file; the actual aliasing information is placed
     into a binary format in the files /usr/lib/aliases.dir and
     /usr/lib/aliases.pag using the program newaliases(1).  A newaliases
     command should be executed each time the aliases file is changed for the
     change to take effect.

NOTES
     Because of restrictions in dbm(3X) a single alias cannot contain more
     than about 1000 bytes of information.  You can get longer aliases by
     "chaining;" that is, make the last name in the alias be a dummy name
     which is a continuation alias.

EXAMPLE
     Here's an example of an aliases file:

          ##
          #  Aliases in this file will NOT be expanded in the header from
          #  Mail, but WILL be visible over networks or from /bin/mail.
          #
          #    >>>>>>>>>>     The program "newaliases" must be run after
          #    >> NOTE >>     this file is updated or else changes won't
          #    >>>>>>>>>>     get to sendmail.
          ##

          MAILER-DAEMON:bob
          root: bcking

          texhax: texhax_list
          tusers: t_users_list
          msgs: "|/usr/ucb/msgs -s"
          sherry: sar
          speedo: mr_earl

SEE ALSO
     newaliases(1), dbm(3X), sendmail(8)
     Managing BSD System Software