postalias (1)

Contents

NAME
SYNOPSIS
DESCRIPTION
DIAGNOSTICS
ENVIRONMENT
CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS
STANDARDS
SEE ALSO
README FILES
LICENSE
AUTHOR(S)

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 existing 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 configuration 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 increasingly 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 following file types:





btree

The output is a btree file, named file_name.db.
This is available on systems with support 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.

fail

A table that reliably fails all requests. The lookup table
name is used for logging only. This table exists to simplify
Postfix error tests.

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 examples.



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 (see 'postconf -d' output)

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