POSTALIAS(1) General Commands Manual 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 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 direc‐
tory.
-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, cre‐
ate a new file with default access permissions (mode 0644).
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 ver‐
bose.
-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_data‐
base_type configuration parameter. The default value for this parameter depends on the host environ‐
ment.
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
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
POSTALIAS(1)
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