MAIL.LOCAL(8)

NAME
mail.local - store mail in a mailbox

SYNOPSIS
mail.local [-7] [-B] [-b] [-d] [-D mbdb] [-l] [-s] [-f from|-r from] [-h filename ] user ...

DESCRIPTION
Mail.local reads the standard input up to an end-of-file and appends it to each user's mail file. The user must be a valid user name.

The options are as follows:

-7  Do not advertise 8BITMIME support in LMTP mode.

-B  Turn off the attempts to notify the ``biff'' service.

-b  Return a permanent error instead of a temporary error if a mailbox exceeds quota.

-d  Specify this is a delivery (for backward compatibility). This option has no effect.

-D mbdb
    Specify the name of the mailbox database which is used to look up local recipient names. This option defaults to "pw", which means use getpwnam().

-f from
    Specify the sender's name.

-l  Turn on LMTP mode.

-s  Turn off the fsync(2) call that forces the mailbox to be committed to disk before returning a "success" status.

-r from
    Specify the sender's name (for backward compatibility). Same as -f.

-h filename
    Store incoming mail in filename in the user's home directory instead of a system mail spool directory.

The next options are only available if mail.local has been compiled with -DHASHSPOOL.

-H hashtypehashdepth
    Select hashed mail directories. Valid hash types are u for user name and m for MD5 (requires compilation with -DHASHSPOOLMD5). Example: -H u2 selects user name hashing with a hash depth of 2. Note: there must be no space between the hash type and the depth.

-p path
    Specify an alternate mail spool path.

-n  Specify that the domain part of recipient addresses in LMTP mode should not be stripped.

Individual mail messages in the mailbox are delimited by an empty line followed by a line beginning with the string ``From ''. A line containing the string ``From '', the sender's name and a time stamp is prepended to each delivered mail message. A blank line is appended to each message. A greater-than character (``>'') is prepended to any line in the message which could be mistaken for a ``From '' delimiter line (that is, a line beginning with the five characters ``From '' following a blank line).

The mail files are exclusively locked with flock(2) while mail is appended, and a user.lock file also is created while the mailbox is locked for compatibility with older MUAs.

If the ``biff'' service is returned by getservbyname(3), the biff server is notified of delivered mail.

The mail.local utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

ENVIRONMENT

TZ  Used to set the appropriate time zone on the timestamp.

FILES

/tmp/local.XXXXXX
    temporary files

/var/mail/user
    user's default mailbox directory

/var/mail/user.lock
    lock file for a user's default mailbox

SEE ALSO
mail(1), flock(2), getservbyname(3), comsat(8), sendmail(8)

WARNING
mail.local escapes only "^From " lines that follow an empty line. If all lines starting with "From " should be escaped, use the 'E' flag for the local mailer in the sendmail.cf file.

HISTORY
A superset of mail.local (handling mailbox reading as well as mail delivery) appeared in Version 7 AT&T UNIX as the program mail.