MAILDELIVERY man page on 4.4BSD

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MAILDELIVERY(5)						       MAILDELIVERY(5)

NAME
       maildelivery

SYNOPSIS
       User delivery specification file

DESCRIPTION
       The delivery of mail by the local channel can run through various cour‐
       ses, including using a user tailorable file.  The delivery follows  the
       following  strategy,  giving  up	 at any point it considers the message
       delivered.

	      1)  If the address indicates a pipe or file default then that is
		  carried out.

	      2)  The  file  .maildelivery  (or something similar) in the home
		  directory is read if it exists and the  actions  in  it  are
		  followed.

	      3)  A    system-wide   file   is	 consulted   next,   such   as
		  /usr/lib/maildelivery and the actions are similar to 2.

	      4)  If the message still hasn't been delivered, then it  is  put
		  into	the user's normal mailbox (.mail or mailbox) depending
		  on the system.

       The format of the .maildelivery file is
	      field <FS> pattern <FS> action <FS> result <FS> string
       where

       field	 is name of a field that is to	be  searched  for  a  pattern.
		 This  is  any	header field that you might find in a message.
		 The most commonly used headers are usually From, to, cc, sub‐
		 ject  and sender.  As well as the standard headers, there are
		 some psuedo-headers that are can also be used. These are :-

		 source	   The out of band sender  information.	 This  is  the
			   address MMDF would use for reporting delivery prob‐
			   lems with the message.

		 addr	   the address that was used to mail to you,  normally
			   'yourname' or 'yourname=string' (see below).

		 default   if  the  message  hasn't  been  delivered yet, this
			   field is matched.

		 *	   this case is always true regardless	of  any	 other
			   action.

       pattern	 is  some  sequence  of	 characters that may be matched in the
		 above field.  Case is not significant.

       action	 is one of the mail delivery actions supported	by  the	 local
		 channel.   Currently  the  supported  actions	are file or >,
		 which appends the message to the given file, with delimiters;
		 pipe  or |, which starts up a process with the message as the
		 standard input; and destroy which throws  the	message	 away.
		 There	is  also qpipe or ^, which fakes a pipe command and is
		 quicker than the standard pipe, but does not do header refor‐
		 matting.
		 For piped commands, the exit status of the command is signif‐
		 icant.	 An exit status of 0 implies  that  the	 command  suc‐
		 ceeded	 and  everything  went	well.  An exit status of octal
		 0300-0377 indicates that a permanent failure occured and  the
		 message  should  be  rejected; these error codes are given in
		 mmdf.h. Any other exit status indicates a  temporary  failure
		 and  the  delivery attempt will be aborted and restarted at a
		 later time.

       result	 is one of the letters A, R  or	 ?  which  stand  for  Accept,
		 Reject and "Accept if not delivered yet".  They have the fol‐
		 lowing effects:

		 A	   If the result of this line's action is OK, then the
			   message can be considered delivered.

		 R	   The	message	 is  not to be considered delivered by
			   this action.

		 ?	   This is equivalent to A except that the  action  is
			   not	carried	 out  if  the message has already been
			   accepted.

       The file is always read completely so that several matches can be made,
       and several actions taken.  As a security check, the .maildelivery file
       must be owned by either the user or root, and must not  have  group  or
       general	write permission. In addition the system delivery file has the
       above restrictions but must also be owned by root.  If the field speci‐
       fied  does  not	need a pattern a dash (-) or similar symbol is usually
       inserted to show that the field is present but  not  used.   The	 field
       separator  character  can  be  either a tab, space or comma (,).	 These
       characters can be included in a string  by  quoting  them  with	double
       quotes (") (double quotes can be included with a backslash '\').

       MMDF  treats  local  addresses  which contain an equals sign ('=') in a
       special manner.	Everything in a local address from an equals  sign  to
       the '@' is ignored and passed on to the local channel.  The local chan‐
       nel will make the entire string available for matching against the addr
       string  of  the	.maildelivery  file.  For example, if you were to sub‐
       scribe to a digest as "foo=digest@bar.NET", submit and the local	 chan‐
       nel  will  verify  that	it  is legal to deliver to "foo", but then the
       entire string  "foo=digest"  will  be  available	 for  string  matching
       against the .maildelivery file for the addr field.

ENVIRONMENT
       The environment in which piped programs are run contains a few standard
       features, specifically:

       HOME is set to the user's home directory.
       USER is set to the user's login name.
       SHELL is set to the user's login shell (defaults to /bin/sh).

       The default umask is set up to 077, this gives a very  protective  cre‐
       ation  mask.   Initgroups  is called if the 4.2 version of UNIX is run‐
       ning.  If further requirements are needed, then a shell script  can  be
       run first to set up more complex environments.

       There  are certain built-in variables that you can give to a piped pro‐
       gram.   These  are  $(sender),  $(address),  $(size),  $(reply-to)  and
       $(info).	  $(sender)  is	 set  to  the  return address for the message.
       $(address) is set to the address that was used to mail to you, normally
       `yourname'  or  `yourname=string'.  $(size) is set to the size in bytes
       of this message.	 $(reply-to) is set to the  Reply-To:  field  (or  the
       From:  field if the former is missing) and so can be used for automatic
       replies.	 $(info) is the info field from the internal mail  header  and
       is probably only of interest to the system maintainers.

EXAMPLE
       Here is a rough idea of what a .maildelivery file looks like:

       # lines starting with a '#' are ignored.
       # as are blank lines
       # file mail with mmdf2 in the "To:" line into file mmdf2.log
       To    mmdf2    file    A	   mmdf2.log
       # Messages from mmdf pipe to the program err-message-archive
       From    mmdf    pipe    A    err-message-archive
       # Anything with the "Sender:" address "uk-mmdf-workers"
       # file in mmdf2.log if not filed already
       Sender	 uk-mmdf-workers    file    ?	 mmdf2.log
       # "To:" unix - put in file unix-news
       To    Unix    >	  A    unix-news
       # if the address is jpo=mmdf - pipe into mmdf-redist
       Addr    jpo=mmdf	   |	A    mmdf-redist
       # if the address is jpo=ack - send an acknowledgement copy back
       Addr    jpo=ack	  |    R    "resend  -r	 $(reply-to)"
       # anything from steve - destroy!
       from    steve	destroy	   A	-
       # anything not matched yet - put into mailbox
       default	  -    >    ?	 mailbox
       # always run rcvalert
       *    -	 |    R	   rcvalert

FILES
       $HOME/.maildelivery - the file's normal location.
       /usr/lib/maildelivery  -	 the  system  file.  This  should be protected
       against attack.	It may contain contents such as:

       default	  -    pipe    A    stdreceive
       *    -	 |    R	   ttynotify

       This allows interfacing to non-standard mail systems, ones  that	 don't
       believe in delimiter-separated mailboxes.

SEE ALSO
       rcvtrip(1)

BUGS
       And why not?

				1 October, 1985		       MAILDELIVERY(5)
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