1.\" Copyright (c) 1985, 1991 The Regents of the University of California. 2.\" All rights reserved. 3.\" 4.\" %sccs.include.redist.roff% 5.\" 6.\" @(#)aliases.5 6.5 (Berkeley) 05/10/91 7.\" 8.Dd 9.Dt ALIASES 5 10.Os BSD 4 11.Sh NAME 12.Nm aliases 13.Nd aliases file for sendmail 14.Sh SYNOPSIS 15.Nm aliases 16.Sh DESCRIPTION 17This file describes user 18.Tn ID 19aliases used by 20.Pa /usr/sbin/sendmail . 21The file resides in 22.Pa /etc 23and 24is formatted as a series of lines of the form 25.Bd -filled -offset indent 26name: name_1, name2, name_3, . . . 27.Ed 28.Pp 29The 30.Em name 31is the name to alias, and the 32.Em name_n 33are the aliases for that name. 34Lines beginning with white space are continuation lines. 35Lines beginning with 36.Ql # 37are comments. 38.Pp 39Aliasing occurs only on local names. 40Loops can not occur, since no message will be sent to any person more than once. 41.Pp 42After aliasing has been done, local and valid recipients who have a 43.Dq Pa .forward 44file in their home directory have messages forwarded to the 45list of users defined in that file. 46.Pp 47This is only the raw data file; the actual aliasing information is 48placed into a binary format in the files 49.Pa /etc/aliases.dir 50and 51.Pa /etc/aliases.pag 52using the program 53.Xr newaliases 1 . 54A 55.Xr newaliases 56command should be executed each time the aliases file is changed for the 57change to take effect. 58.Sh SEE ALSO 59.Xr newaliases 1 , 60.Xr dbm 3 , 61.Xr sendmail 8 62.Rs 63.%T "SENDMAIL Installation and Operation Guide" 64.Re 65.Rs 66.%T "SENDMAIL An Internetwork Mail Router" 67.Re 68.Sh BUGS 69Because of restrictions in 70.Xr dbm 3 71a single alias cannot contain more than about 1000 bytes of information. 72You can get longer aliases by ``chaining''; that is, make the last name in 73the alias be a dummy name which is a continuation alias. 74.Sh HISTORY 75The 76.Nm 77file format appeared in 78.Bx 4.0 . 79