NAME

mailer.conf — configuration file for mailwrapper(8)

DESCRIPTION

The file /etc/mail/mailer.conf contains a series of lines of the form

name program [ arguments ...]

The first word of each line is the name of a program invoking mailwrapper(8). (For example, on a typical system /usr/sbin/sendmail would be a symbolic link to mailwrapper(8), as would newaliases(1) and mailq(1). Thus, name might be “ sendmail” or “ newaliases” etc.)

The second word of each line is the name of the program to actually execute when the first name is invoked.

The further arguments, if any, are passed to the program, followed by the arguments mailwrapper(8) was called with.

The file may also contain comment lines, denoted by a ‘ #’ mark in the first column of any line.

FILES

/etc/mail/mailer.conf

EXAMPLES

This example shows how to set up mailer.conf to invoke the traditional sendmail(8) program:

# Execute the "real" sendmail program located in 
# /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail 
sendmail /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail 
send-mail /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail 
mailq  /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail 
newaliases /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail

This example shows how to invoke a sendmail-workalike like Postfix in place of sendmail(8):

# Emulate sendmail using postfix 
sendmail /usr/local/sbin/sendmail 
send-mail /usr/local/sbin/sendmail 
mailq  /usr/local/sbin/sendmail 
newaliases /usr/local/sbin/sendmail

This example shows how to invoke a sendmail-workalike with Exim (from ports) in place of sendmail(8):

# Emulate sendmail using exim 
sendmail /usr/local/sbin/exim 
send-mail /usr/local/sbin/exim 
mailq  /usr/local/sbin/exim -bp 
newaliases /usr/bin/true 
rmail  /usr/local/sbin/exim -i -oee

This example shows the use of the mini_sendmail package from ports in place of sendmail(8). Note the use of additional arguments.

# Send outgoing mail to a smart relay using mini_sendmail 
sendmail /usr/local/bin/mini_sendmail -srelayhost 
send-mail /usr/local/bin/mini_sendmail -srelayhost

SEE ALSO

mail(1), mailq(1), newaliases(1), mailwrapper(8), sendmail(8)

postfix(1) ( ports/mail/postfix), mini_sendmail(8) ( ports/mail/mini_sendmail)

HISTORY

mailer.conf appeared in NetBSD 1.4.

AUTHORS

Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>

BUGS

The entire reason this program exists is a crock. Instead, a command for how to submit mail should be standardized, and all the "behave differently if invoked with a different name" behavior of things like mailq(1) should go away.