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 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  expres‐
              sion 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  val‐
              ues.  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 soft‐
              ware 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" com‐
              mand.

              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 sys‐
                     tems 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  sys‐
                     tems 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 includ‐
       ing 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



                                                                                     POSTALIAS(1)