MAIL.LOCAL(8)           FreeBSD System Manager's Manual          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.

                         $Date: 2013-11-22 20:51:51 $            MAIL.LOCAL(8)