Chapter 13. Mailing Lists and ~/.forward
As was shown in the preceding chapter, the
sendmail program is able to obtain its
list of recipients from the aliases file. It
can also obtain lists of recipients from external files. In this
chapter, we will examine the two forms that those external files
take: the :include
: form
(accessed from the aliases file) and the
individual user’s ~/.forward file. Because the
chief use of the :include
: form
of alias is to create mailing lists, we will
first discuss mailing lists in general, then their creation and
management, and then the user’s ~/.forward
file.
A mailing list is the name of a single recipient[209] that, when expanded by sendmail aliasing, becomes a list of many recipients. Mailing lists can be internal (in which all recipients are listed in the aliases file), external (in which all recipients are listed in external files), or a combination of the two. The list of recipients that forms a mailing list can include users, programs, and files.
[209] * RFC defines a mailing list as a pseudouser’s address that expands to multiple real email addresses. As you will see when we cover the ~/.forward file, real email addresses also can expand to mailing lists.
Get sendmail, 4th Edition now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.