xref: /freebsd/contrib/sendmail/mail.local/mail.local.8 (revision 7f3dea244c40159a41ab22da77a434d7c5b5e85a)
1.\" Copyright (c) 1998 Sendmail, Inc.  All rights reserved.
2.\" Copyright (c) 1990, 1993
3.\"	The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.
4.\"
5.\" By using this file, you agree to the terms and conditions set
6.\" forth in the LICENSE file which can be found at the top level of
7.\" the sendmail distribution.
8.\"
9.\"
10.\"	@(#)mail.local.8	8.7 (Berkeley) 5/19/1998
11.\"
12.Dd May 19, 1998
13.Dt MAIL.LOCAL 8
14.Os
15.Sh NAME
16.Nm mail.local
17.Nd store mail in a mailbox
18.Sh SYNOPSIS
19.Nm mail.local
20.Op Fl f Ar from
21.Op Fl b
22.Op Fl s
23.Ar user ...
24.Sh DESCRIPTION
25.Nm Mail.local
26reads the standard input up to an end-of-file and appends it to each
27.Ar user's
28.Pa mail
29file.
30The
31.Ar user
32must be a valid user name.
33.Pp
34The options are as follows:
35.Bl -tag -width xxxfrom
36.It Fl f Ar from
37Specify the sender's name.
38.It Fl b
39Turn off the attempts to notify the
40.Dq biff
41service.
42.It Fl s
43Turn off the
44.Xr fsync 2
45call that forces the mailbox to be committed to disk before returning a
46.Dq success
47status.
48.El
49.Pp
50Individual mail messages in the mailbox are delimited by an empty
51line followed by a line beginning with the string ``From ''.
52A line containing the string ``From '', the sender's name and a time stamp
53is prepended to each delivered mail message.
54A blank line is appended to each message.
55A greater-than character (``>'') is prepended to any line in the message
56which could be mistaken for a ``From '' delimiter line
57(that is,
58a line beginning with the five characters
59``From '' following a blank line).
60.Pp
61The mail files are exclusively locked with
62.Xr flock 2
63while mail is appended,
64and a
65.Pa user.lock
66file also is created while the mailbox is locked
67for compatibility with older MUAs.
68.Pp
69If the ``biff'' service is returned by
70.Xr getservbyname 3 ,
71the biff server is notified of delivered mail.
72.Pp
73The
74.Nm mail.local
75utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.
76.Sh ENVIRONMENT
77.Bl -tag -width indent
78.It Ev TZ
79Used to set the appropriate time zone on the timestamp.
80.El
81.Sh FILES
82.Bl -tag -width /tmp/local.XXXXXX -compact
83.It Pa /tmp/local.XXXXXX
84temporary files
85.It Pa /var/mail/user
86user's mailbox directory
87.It Pa /var/mail/user.lock
88lock file for a user's mailbox
89.El
90.Sh SEE ALSO
91.Xr mail 1 ,
92.Xr flock 2 ,
93.Xr getservbyname 3 ,
94.Xr comsat 8 ,
95.Xr sendmail 8
96.Sh HISTORY
97A superset of
98.Nm mail.local
99(handling mailbox reading as well as mail delivery)
100appeared in
101.At v7 .
102as the program
103.Nm mail .
104