Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!julius.cs.uiuc.edu!ux1.cso.uiuc.edu!mp.cs.niu.edu!rickert From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail Subject: Re: full description of .forward Message-ID: <1990Oct29.230614.4328@mp.cs.niu.edu> Date: 29 Oct 90 23:06:14 GMT References: Distribution: comp Organization: Northern Illinois University Lines: 35 In article victor@arnor.uucp writes: >Can someone supply me with (or point me to) a FULL description of the >contents of .forward? In particular what can be inside of a "| ". Must >it be just one command, or can it be a series of commands like >"comm1; comm2". Is this just passed to /bin/sh. I've looked in the >sendmail/doc directories, but nothing is said about this. > .forward consists of a comma separated list of addresses. It is permissible for one or more of those addresses to be programs, as in: "|program parameters". When a program is found in .forward (or in the system aliases file) it is fed to the 'prog' mailer. Look in 'sendmail.cf' for a definition. In my setup, the mailer is defined as: Mprog, P=/bin/sh, F=DFMhlsu, R=10, S=10, A=sh -c $u This means that everything following the '|' is just fed as an argument to /bin/sh -c In other words, any string valid for the -c option of /bin/sh should be ok. As long as the command is quoted with ", the actual details of what is in the command are not parsed by sendmail, but just fed directly to the shell. The standard input to /bin/sh is the message concerned. The mailer flags control the header lines added to the mail before pumping it into /bin/sh. Hope that helps. -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115. +1-815-753-6940