.\" $OpenBSD: mailwrapper.8,v 1.12 2014/03/27 22:34:42 jmc Exp $ .\" $NetBSD: mailwrapper.8,v 1.16 2014/09/19 16:05:55 wiz Exp $ .\" .\" Copyright (c) 1998 .\" Perry E. Metzger. All rights reserved. .\" .\" Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without .\" modification, are permitted provided that the following conditions .\" are met: .\" 1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer. .\" 2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright .\" notice, this list of conditions and the following disclaimer in the .\" documentation and/or other materials provided with the distribution. .\" 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this software .\" must display the following acknowledgment: .\" This product includes software developed for the NetBSD Project .\" by Perry E. Metzger. .\" 4. The name of the author may not be used to endorse or promote products .\" derived from this software without specific prior written permission. .\" .\" THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE AUTHOR ``AS IS'' AND ANY EXPRESS OR .\" IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES .\" OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. .\" IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHOR BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, .\" INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT .\" NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, .\" DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY .\" THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT .\" (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF .\" THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. .\" .Dd October 29, 2014 .Dt MAILWRAPPER 8 .Os .Sh NAME .Nm mailwrapper .Nd invoke appropriate .Tn MTA software based on configuration file .Sh SYNOPSIS Special. See below. .Sh DESCRIPTION Once upon time, the only Mail Transfer Agent .Pq Tn MTA software easily available was .Dq sendmail . This famous .Tn MTA was written by .An Eric Allman and first appeared in .Bx 4.1 . The legacy of this .Tn MTA affected most Mail User Agents .Pq Tn MUAs such as .Xr mail 1 ; the path and calling conventions expected by .Dq sendmail were compiled in. .Pp But times changed. On a modern .Fx system, the administrator may wish to use one of several available .Tn MTAs . .Pp It would be difficult to modify all .Tn MUA software typically available on a system, so most of the authors of alternative .Tn MTAs have written their front end message submission programs that may appear in the place of .Pa /usr/sbin/sendmail , but still follow the same calling conventions as .Dq sendmail . .Pp The .Dq sendmail .Tn MTA also typically has aliases named .Xr mailq 1 and .Xr newaliases 1 linked to it. The program knows to behave differently when its .Va argv[0] is .Dq mailq or .Dq newaliases and behaves appropriately. Typically, replacement .Tn MTAs provide similar functionality, either through a program that also switches behavior based on calling name, or through a set of programs that provide similar functionality. .Pp Although having replacement programs that plug replace .Dq sendmail helps in installing alternative .Tn MTAs , it essentially makes the configuration of the system depend on hand installing new programs in .Pa /usr . This leads to configuration problems for many administrators, since they may wish to install a new .Tn MTA without altering the system provided .Pa /usr . (This may be, for example, to avoid having upgrade problems when a new version of the system is installed over the old.) They may also have a shared .Pa /usr among several machines, and may wish to avoid placing implicit configuration information in a read-only .Pa /usr . .Pp The .Nm program is designed to replace .Pa /usr/sbin/sendmail and to invoke an appropriate .Tn MTA based on configuration information placed in .Pa ${LOCALBASE}/etc/mail/mailer.conf falling back on .Pa /etc/mail/mailer.conf . This permits the administrator to configure which .Tn MTA is to be invoked on the system at run time. .Pp Other configuration files may need to be altered when replacing .Xr sendmail 8 . For example, if the replacement .Tn MTA does not support the .Fl A option with .Xr mailq 1 , .Va daily_status_include_submit_mailq should be turned off in .Pa /etc/periodic.conf . .Sh FILES Configuration for .Nm is kept in .Pa ${LOCALBASE}/etc/mail/mailer.conf or .Pa /etc/mail/mailer.conf . .Pa /usr/sbin/sendmail is typically set up as a symbolic link to .Nm which is not usually invoked on its own. .Sh EXIT STATUS .Ex -std .Sh DIAGNOSTICS The .Nm will print a diagnostic if its configuration file is missing or malformed, or does not contain a mapping for the name under which it was invoked. .Sh SEE ALSO .Xr mail 1 , .Xr mailq 1 , .Xr newaliases 1 , .Xr mailer.conf 5 , .Xr periodic.conf 5 , .Xr dma 8 , .Xr sendmail 8 .Sh HISTORY The .Nm utility first appeared in .Nx 1.4 and then .Fx 4.0 . .Sh AUTHORS .An Perry E. Metzger Aq Mt perry@piermont.com .Sh BUGS The entire reason this program exists is a crock. Instead, a command for how to submit mail should be standardized, and all the .Dq behave differently if invoked with a different name behavior of things like .Xr mailq 1 should go away.