POSTALIAS(1) POSTALIAS(1)
NAME
postalias - Postfix alias database maintenance
SYNOPSIS
postalias [-Nfinoprsvw] [-c config_dir] [-d key] [-q key]
[file_type:]file_name ...
DESCRIPTION
The postalias(1) command creates or queries one or more Postfix alias databases, or updates an exist-ing existing
ing one. The input and output file formats are expected to be compatible with Sendmail version 8, and
are expected to be suitable for the use as NIS alias maps.
If the result files do not exist they will be created with the same group and other read permissions
as their source file.
While a database update is in progress, signal delivery is postponed, and an exclusive, advisory,
lock is placed on the entire database, in order to avoid surprises in spectator processes.
The format of Postfix alias input files is described in aliases(5).
By default the lookup key is mapped to lowercase to make the lookups case insensitive; as of Postfix
2.3 this case folding happens only with tables whose lookup keys are fixed-case strings such as
btree:, dbm: or hash:. With earlier versions, the lookup key is folded even with tables where a
lookup field can match both upper and lower case text, such as regexp: and pcre:. This resulted in
loss of information with $number substitutions.
Options:
-c config_dir
Read the main.cf configuration file in the named directory instead of the default configura-tion configuration
tion directory.
-d key Search the specified maps for key and remove one entry per map. The exit status is zero when
the requested information was found.
If a key value of - is specified, the program reads key values from the standard input stream.
The exit status is zero when at least one of the requested keys was found.
-f Do not fold the lookup key to lower case while creating or querying a table.
With Postfix version 2.3 and later, this option has no effect for regular expression tables.
There, case folding is controlled by appending a flag to a pattern.
-i Incremental mode. Read entries from standard input and do not truncate an existing database.
By default, postalias(1) creates a new database from the entries in file_name.
-N Include the terminating null character that terminates lookup keys and values. By default,
postalias(1) does whatever is the default for the host operating system.
-n Don't include the terminating null character that terminates lookup keys and values. By
default, postalias(1) does whatever is the default for the host operating system.
-o Do not release root privileges when processing a non-root input file. By default, postalias(1)
drops root privileges and runs as the source file owner instead.
-p Do not inherit the file access permissions from the input file when creating a new file.
Instead, create a new file with default access permissions (mode 0644).
-q key Search the specified maps for key and write the first value found to the standard output
stream. The exit status is zero when the requested information was found.
If a key value of - is specified, the program reads key values from the standard input stream
and writes one line of key: value output for each key that was found. The exit status is zero
when at least one of the requested keys was found.
-r When updating a table, do not complain about attempts to update existing entries, and make
those updates anyway.
-s Retrieve all database elements, and write one line of key: value output for each element. The
elements are printed in database order, which is not necessarily the same as the original
input order. This feature is available in Postfix version 2.2 and later, and is not available
for all database types.
-v Enable verbose logging for debugging purposes. Multiple -v options make the software increas-ingly increasingly
ingly verbose.
-w When updating a table, do not complain about attempts to update existing entries, and ignore
those attempts.
Arguments:
file_type
The database type. To find out what types are supported, use the "postconf -m" command.
The postalias(1) command can query any supported file type, but it can create only the follow-ing following
ing file types:
btree The output is a btree file, named file_name.db. This is available on systems with sup-port support
port for db databases.
cdb The output is one file named file_name.cdb. This is available on systems with support
for cdb databases.
dbm The output consists of two files, named file_name.pag and file_name.dir. This is
available on systems with support for dbm databases.
hash The output is a hashed file, named file_name.db. This is available on systems with
support for db databases.
sdbm The output consists of two files, named file_name.pag and file_name.dir. This is
available on systems with support for sdbm databases.
When no file_type is specified, the software uses the database type specified via the
default_database_type configuration parameter. The default value for this parameter depends
on the host environment.
file_name
The name of the alias database source file when creating a database.
DIAGNOSTICS
Problems are logged to the standard error stream and to syslogd(8). No output means that no problems
were detected. Duplicate entries are skipped and are flagged with a warning.
postalias(1) terminates with zero exit status in case of success (including successful "postalias -q"
lookup) and terminates with non-zero exit status in case of failure.
ENVIRONMENT
MAIL_CONFIG
Directory with Postfix configuration files.
MAIL_VERBOSE
Enable verbose logging for debugging purposes.
CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS
The following main.cf parameters are especially relevant to this program.
The text below provides only a parameter summary. See postconf(5) for more details including exam-ples. examples.
ples.
alias_database (see 'postconf -d' output)
The alias databases for local(8) delivery that are updated with "newaliases" or with "sendmail
-bi".
config_directory (see 'postconf -d' output)
The default location of the Postfix main.cf and master.cf configuration files.
berkeley_db_create_buffer_size (16777216)
The per-table I/O buffer size for programs that create Berkeley DB hash or btree tables.
berkeley_db_read_buffer_size (131072)
The per-table I/O buffer size for programs that read Berkeley DB hash or btree tables.
default_database_type (see 'postconf -d' output)
The default database type for use in newaliases(1), postalias(1) and postmap(1) commands.
syslog_facility (mail)
The syslog facility of Postfix logging.
syslog_name (postfix)
The mail system name that is prepended to the process name in syslog records, so that "smtpd"
becomes, for example, "postfix/smtpd".
STANDARDS
RFC 822 (ARPA Internet Text Messages)
SEE ALSO
aliases(5), format of alias database input file.
local(8), Postfix local delivery agent.
postconf(1), supported database types
postconf(5), configuration parameters
postmap(1), create/update/query lookup tables
newaliases(1), Sendmail compatibility interface.
syslogd(8), system logging
README FILES
Use "postconf readme_directory" or "postconf html_directory" to locate this information.
DATABASE_README, Postfix lookup table overview
LICENSE
The Secure Mailer license must be distributed with this software.
AUTHOR(S)
Wietse Venema
IBM T.J. Watson Research
P.O. Box 704
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA
POSTALIAS(1)
|