July 17, 2004 MAILER.CONF 5

### NAME

mailer.conf - configuration file for mailwrapper(8)

### DESCRIPTION

The file ```/etc/mailer.conf` contains a series of lines of the form

```name` ```program` [arguments ...]

The first word of each line is the ```name` of a program invoking mailwrapper(8). (For example, on a typical system ```/usr/sbin/sendmail` would be a symbolic link to mailwrapper(8), as would newaliases(1) and mailq(1). Thus, ```name` might be ``sendmail'' or ``newaliases'' etc.)

The second word of each line is the name of the ```program` to actually execute when the first name is invoked.

The further arguments, if any, are passed to the ```program`, followed by the arguments mailwrapper(8) was called with.

The file may also contain comment lines, denoted by a `#' mark in the first column of any line.

The default mailer is sendmail(8), which will also start by default (unless specifically disabled via an rc.conf(5) setting) so that locally generated mail can be delivered, if the ``sendmail'' setting in ```/etc/mailer.conf` is set to ``/usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail''.

### FILES

/etc/mailer.conf

### EXAMPLES

This example shows how to set up mailer.conf to invoke the traditional sendmail(8) program:

  `

      # Execute the "real" sendmail program located in
      # /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
      sendmail        /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
      send-mail       /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
      mailq           /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
      newaliases      /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
      hoststat        /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
      purgestat       /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail

  `

This example shows how to invoke the postfix(1) MTA suite in place of sendmail(8):

  `

      # Emulate sendmail using postfix
      sendmail        /usr/libexec/postfix/sendmail
      send-mail       /usr/libexec/postfix/sendmail
      mailq           /usr/libexec/postfix/sendmail
      newaliases      /usr/libexec/postfix/sendmail

  `

This example shows the use of the mini-sendmail package from pkgsrc in place of sendmail(8): Note the use of additional arguments.

  `

      # Send outgoing mail to a smart relay using mini-sendmail
      sendmail        /usr/pkg/sbin/mini-sendmail -srelayhost
      send-mail       /usr/pkg/sbin/mini-sendmail -srelayhost

  `

### SEE ALSO

mail(1), mailq(1), newaliases(1), postfix(1), mailwrapper(8), sendmail(8)

```pkgsrc/mail/mini_sendmail`

### HISTORY

mailer.conf appeared in NetBSD1.4.

### AUTHORS

Perry E. Metzger <perry@piermont.com>

### BUGS

The entire reason this program exists is a crock. Instead, a command for how to submit mail should be standardized, and all the "behave differently if invoked with a different name" behavior of things like mailq(1) should go away.