Copyright (c) 1999-2000 Sendmail, Inc. and its suppliers.
All rights reserved.
Copyright (c) 1985, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993
The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.


By using this file, you agree to the terms and conditions set
forth in the LICENSE file which can be found at the top level of
the sendmail distribution.


$Id: vacation.1,v 8.11.4.6 2000/12/29 18:12:23 gshapiro Exp $

vacation - return ``I am not here'' indication vacation [ -i ] [ -I ] [ -r interval ] [ -x ] [ -a alias ] [ -f database ] [ -m message ] [ -s address ] [ -t time ] [ -z ] login Vacation returns a message to the sender of a message telling them that you are currently not reading your mail. The intended use is in a .forward file. For example, your .forward file might have: \eeric, "|/usr/bin/vacation -a allman eric"

which would send messages to you (assuming your login name was eric) and reply to any messages for ``eric'' or ``allman''.

Available options:

-a " alias" Handle messages for .Ar alias in the same manner as those received for the user's login name.

-f " filename" Use filename as name of the database instead of ~/.vacation.db . Unless the filename starts with / it is relative to ~.

-i Initialize the vacation database files. It should be used before you modify your .forward file.

-I Same as -i (for backwards compatibility).

-m " filename" Use filename as name of the file containing the message to send instead of ~/.vacation.msg . Unless the filename starts with / it is relative to ~.

-r " interval" Set the reply interval to interval days. The default is one week. An interval of ``0'' or ``infinite'' (actually, any non-numeric character) will never send more than one reply.

-s " address" Use address instead of the incoming message sender address on the From line as the recipient for the vacation message.

-t " time" Ignored, available only for compatibility with Sun's vacation program.

-x reads an exclusion list from stdin (one address per line). Mails coming from an address in this exclusion list won't get a reply by vacation . It is possible to exclude complete domains by specifying ``@domain'' as element of the exclusion list.

-z Set the sender of the vacation message to ``<>'' instead of the user. This probably violates the RFCs since vacation messages are not required by a standards-track RFC to have a null reverse-path.

No message will be sent unless login (or an alias supplied using the -a option) is part of either the ``To:'' or ``Cc:'' headers of the mail. No messages from ``???-REQUEST'', ``???-RELAY'', ``???-OWNER'', ``OWNER-???'', ``Postmaster'', ``UUCP'', ``MAILER'', or ``MAILER-DAEMON'' will be replied to (where these strings are case insensitive) nor is a notification sent if a ``Precedence: bulk'' or ``Precedence: junk'' line is included in the mail headers. The people who have sent you messages are maintained as a db(3) database in the file .vacation.db in your home directory.

Vacation expects a file .vacation.msg , in your home directory, containing a message to be sent back to each sender. It should be an entire message (including headers). For example, it might contain:

From: eric@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman)
Subject: I am on vacation
Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: The Vacation program
Precedence: bulk

I am on vacation until July 22. If you have something urgent,
please contact Keith Bostic <bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU>.
--eric

Vacation reads the first line from the standard input for a UNIX ``From'' line to determine the sender. Sendmail(8) includes this ``From'' line automatically.

Fatal errors, such as calling vacation with incorrect arguments, or with non-existent login s, are logged in the system log file, using syslog(8).

1.8i ~/.vacation.db default database file

~/.vacation.msg default message to send

sendmail(8), syslog(8) The vacation command appeared in 4.3BSD.