Aliases Introduction It is often required to redirect the mail of some user to other loca­ tion(s), other user(s) or even to programs. 11.. TTaasskkss For a given name which may or may not be a real user on this machine, you are allowed to enter: AA ffiilltteerr pprrooggrraamm It is possible to "pipe" all message to a program. The program can be a program, a shell script or any shell construction such as cat >>/tmp/mail.log This command for one will append all incoming mail for the alias in the file /tmp/mail.log. This is the way to install mail server packages. AA lliisstt ffiillee You may want to defer the administration of a mailing list to someone without privilege. You are allowed to specify a text file holding email names. This file may belong to one user. A simple text editor is needed to manage it. OOnnee oorr sseevveerraall eemmaaiill aaddddrreessss Each email address may be simply a user name, another alias name (alias may be nested), or a full email address. You can setup simple mailing lists this way. Those features are independent. This means you can setup a filter program and a list file and a bunch of email address for the same alias name. 22.. PPsseeuuddoo uusseerr It is often required to talk to someone in an organization without knowing his real name. We only want to talk to someone in charge of a service for example. 22..11.. LLiisstt ooff wweellll kknnoowwnn ppsseeuuddoo--uusseerrss The _I_n_t_e_r_n_e_t has defined may pseudo-users. Here is a list of the one you should define on your system (on the mail-host server) · hostmaster In charge of your DNS. · postmaster The is the address to use when you need information about someone (Exact email address) or you want to signal a problem. · usenet Used to signal problem about news on your system. · webmaster In charge of the your web site. 22..22.. AAlliiaasseess ffoorr aaddmmiinniissttrraattiivvee aaccccoouunntt _L_i_n_u_x system have several administrative accounts which received mail. It is a pain to manually log as one of those user just to check if there is any mail. This is a good idea to redirect those account to a real user (you ?). Here is a list of those accounts · root · uucp · news 22..33.. TThhee aaddmmiinn ppsseeuuddoo--uusseerr On small site, there is a single administrator for the complete network. Instead of setting all those aliases pointing to him, you may save some time and point all to the pseudo-user admin which is itself and alias pointing to the administrator. This may save time. 33.. WWhheerree ttoo ddeeffiinnee aalliiaasseess Aliases are generally defined on the mail-host server of an organization. It is possible to setup aliases on any machine though. 44.. MMaaiilliinngg lliisstt aaddmmiinniissttrraattoorr You can define mailing list using aliases and aliases files. This is handy and will work for small mailing list with limited trafic (not too many new members getting in and out). With a growing mailing list, you will often get few subscribers who have improper email setup. Every time one member will send a message, he will receive a some administrative replies stating that some unknown people did not received email properly. This is annoying as those member can't do a thing to solve this. Here is that trick. If you create a mailing list, say product-list then create another alias owner-product-list which point to yourself. Sendmail will automaticly send error message to you instead of the original author of the message.