Aliases database

Aliasing is the process of converting one recipient name into another; a generic name (such as root) into a real user name; or one name into a list of names (that is, a mailing list). Define the location of your aliases file using define(`ALIAS_FILE',`path') in your sendmail.mc file. For example:

define(`ALIAS_FILE',`/etc/mail/aliases')

For sendmail to work, aliases are required for MAILER-DAEMON and postmaster. Every aliases file must include these required aliases.

The alias for postmaster must expand to the name of a real user, based on the requirement that every site has to be able to accept mail addressed to a user named postmaster. Unless a site has real user account named postmaster, an alias is required in the aliases file. The postmaster receives mail about mail problems sent by mail-related programs and by users that are having trouble sending mail.

When mail is bounced (returned because it could not be delivered), it is sent from MAILER-DAEMON but it is shown as being the original sender who sent the mail. This alias is defined because users often inadvertently reply to the bounced mail.

The following example shows an aliases file. Lines that begin with # are comments. Empty lines are ignored. For more information about the different forms of aliases, see the bat book.

# Alias for mailer daemon
MAILER-DAEMON:IBMUSER

# Following alias is required by the new mail protocol, RFC 822
postmaster:IBMUSER

# Alias to handle mail to msgs and news
nobody: /dev/null

Note: After the aliases file is created and before the sendmail daemon is brought up for the first time, the aliases file must be loaded by running sendmail using the newaliases command or with the -bi command-line switch.

Restriction: The section USING LDAP FOR ALIASES, MAPS, AND CLASSES, as documented in /usr/lpp/tcpip/samples/sendmail/README.m4, is not supported on z/OS®.