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This page displays the COHERENT manpage for newaliases [Build the smail aliases data base from an ASCII source file].

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newaliases -- Command

Build the smail aliases data base from an ASCII source file
/usr/lib/mail/newaliases

Command newaliases  reads the ASCII  source file for an  aliases data base,
and builds the aliases data base according to the configuration information
in /usr/lib/mail/config.  Run this program whenever  changes have been made
to  the ASCII  source file.   If this  program is not  used, smail  may not
notice the changes that have been made.

The aliases data  base can be in a DBM data  base, a sorted text file, or a
plain text file.   (For information about what a DBM  data base is, see the
Lexicon entry for libgdbm.) In the  latter case, which is the default under
COHERENT, the ASCII source file doubles as the data-base file.

To process  an file, first  use the command  mkline to remove  comments and
regularize  it.  If  you wish  to build  a sorted data  base, then  use the
command mksort  with its command-line  option -f to create  the sorted data
base.  If you  wish, however, to build a DBM  data base, use command mkdbm,
again with option -f, to create  the data base.  In either case, be careful
that smail never uses a truncated or partially built data base.

For plain  text data bases, newaliases displays a  summary of its contents,
but no changes are actually made.

Files

/usr/lib/mail/aliases
     The text file that defines aliases.
/usr/lib/mail/aliases.dir
/usr/lib/mail/aliases.pag
     The DBM data base that is built from the text file aliases.
/usr/lib/mail/config
     The file that gives the default configuration for smail.

See Also

commands,
libgdbm,
mail [overview],
mkdbm,
mkline,
mksort,
smail

Notes

The name newaliases is  retained for compatibility with BSD sendmail. Under
smail release 3.1, this command usually is named mkaliases.

Copyright © 1987, 1988 Ronald S. Karr and Landon Curt Noll.  Copyright
© 1992 Ronald S. Karr.

For  details on  the distribution rights  and restrictions  associated with
this software, see file COPYING, which  is included with the source code to
the smail system; or type the command: smail -bc.