Aliases map names to address lists using personal, systemwide, and domainwide alias files. You can define three types of aliases:
personal | Defined by individual users in the user's $HOME/.mailrc file. |
local system | Defined by the mail system administrator in the /etc/aliases file. These aliases apply to mail handled by the sendmail command on the local system. Local system aliases rarely need to be changed. |
domainwide | Aliases are found using the Network Information Service (NIS). (NIS must be configured and the Op option must be set in the sendmail.cf file.) To add an alias entry to the NIS alias database, the root user must add an entry to the /etc/aliases file on the NIS master server, then rebuild the NIS databases. To rebuild, the root user on the NIS master server must change directory to /var/yp and run the make command. |
The /etc/aliases file consists of a series of entries in the following format:
Alias: Name1, Name2, ... NameX
where Alias can be any alphanumeric string that you choose (not including special characters, such as @ or !). Name1 through NameX is a series of one or more recipient names. The list of names can span one or more lines. Each continued line begins with a space or a tab. Blank lines and lines beginning with a # (pound sign) are comment lines.
The /etc/aliases file must contain the following three aliases:
Any time you change this file, you must recompile it into a database format that the sendmail command can use. See Building the Alias Database.
To create or modify local system aliases:
writers: geo, mark@zeus, ctw@athena, brianThis definition could also be contained on several lines, as long as each added line begins with a space or a tab, for example:
writers: geo, mark@zeus, ctw@athena, brian
editors: glenda@hera, davidm@kronos, perryw@athena owner-editors: glenda@hera
The sendmail command does not use directly the alias definitions in the local system /etc/aliases file. Instead, the sendmail command reads a processed database manager (dbm) version of the /etc/aliases file. You can compile the alias database using one of the following methods:
Notes:
- If these files do not exist, the sendmail command cannot process mail and will generate an error message.
- If you have multiple alias databases specified, the -bi flag rebuilds all the database types it understands (for example, it can rebuild Network Database Management (NDBM) databases but not NIS databases).
The /etc/netsvc.conf file contains the ordering of system services. To specify the service ordering of aliases, add the following line:
aliases=service, service
where service can be either files or nis. For example:
aliases=files, nis
tells the sendmail command to try the local alias file first; and if that fails, try nis. If nis is defined as a service, it should be running.
For further information on the /etc/netsvc.conf file, see AIX Version 4.3 Files Reference.