NAME¶
forward - email forwarding information file
DESCRIPTION¶
Users may put a
.forward file in their home directory. If this file
exists,
smtpd(8) forwards email to the destinations specified therein.
A
.forward file contains a list of expansion values, as described in
aliases(5). Each expansion value should be on a line by itself.
However, the
.forward mechanism differs from the aliases mechanism in
that it disallows file inclusion (:include:) and it performs expansion under
the user ID of the
.forward file owner.
Permissions on the
.forward file are very strict and expansion is
rejected if the file is group or world-writable; if the home directory is
group writeable; or if the file is not owned by the user.
Users should avoid editing directly the
.forward file to prevent delivery
failures from occurring if a message arrives while the file is not fully
written. The best option is to use a temporary file and use the
mv(1)
command to atomically overwrite the former
.forward. Alternatively,
setting the
sticky(8) bit on the home directory will cause the
.forward lookup to return a temporary failure, causing mails to be
deferred.
FILES¶
- ~/.forward
- Email forwarding information.
EXAMPLES¶
The following file forwards mail to ``user@example.com'', and pipes the same
mail to ``examplemda''.
# empty lines are ignored
user@example.com # anything after # is ignored
"|/path/to/examplemda"
SEE ALSO¶
aliases(5),
smtpd(8)