sendmail, 4th Edition

Other Uses for vacation

The vacation program can also be used as a general notification that you are busy, as a way to retire users, and as a way to manage hours.

You are too busy to reply promptly

People are sometimes too busy to reply to all the email they get in a prompt fashion, and it is common courtesy to let senders know of the situation. Consider the following .vacation.msg file:

From: Your Full Name <[e-mail]>
Subject: I got your Message
Precedence: bulk
As you know, I often receive over 1,000 messages a week and cannot
reply to each message right away. This automatic reply is just to
reassure you that I receive all messages, and reply to them eventually.

For a plan such as this to work, you should avoid sending this message too often. Consider resetting the default resend interval from a week to a month with the -r command-line switch (-r on page 390).

Retire users with notification

The vacation program is also useful as a graceful way to retire users while keeping their accounts open for a while. Consider, for example, the following .vacation.msg file:

From: Full Name <[e-mail]>
Subject: I have moved
Precedence: bulk

Thanks for your email. It has been forwarded to my new address at:

       [e-mail]

Please update your records to contain this new address.

To complement this message, the user’s ~/.forward file could be set up like this:

[e-mail]
|"/usr/ucb/vacation user"

After the account is closed, you can fall back to the less graceful method described ...