MAILER.CONF(5)

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.