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1.7 Basic Modes of sendmail | 23
Although early versions of sendmail can automatically update the database whenever
the aliases file is changed, that is no longer possible with modern versions.* Now,
you need to rebuild the database yourself, either by running sendmail using the command
newaliases or with the -bi command-line switch. Both do the same thing:
% newaliases
% /usr/lib/sendmail -bi
There will be a delay while sendmail rebuilds the aliases database; then a summary of
what it did is printed:
/etc/mail/aliases: 859 aliases, longest 615 bytes, 28096 bytes total
This line shows that the database was successfully rebuilt. Beginning with V8.6 sendmail,
multiple alias files became possible, so each line (and there might be many)
begins with the name of an alias file. The information then displayed is the number
of aliases processed, the size of the biggest entry to the right of the : in the aliases file,
and the total number of bytes entered into the database. Any mistakes in an alias file
will also be printed here.
The aliases file and how to manipulate it are covered in Chapter 12 on page 460.
1.7.5 Verify Mode (-bv)
A handy tool for checking aliases is the -bv command-line switch. It causes sendmail
to recursively look up an alias and report the ultimate real name that it found.
To illustrate, consider the following aliases file:
animals: farmanimals,wildanimals
bill-eats: redmeat
birds: farmbirds,wildbirds
bob-eats: seafood,whitemeat
farmanimals: pig,cow
farmbirds: chicken,turkey
fish: cod,tuna
redmeat: animals
seafood: fish,shellfish
shellfish: crab,lobster
ted-eats: bob-eats,bill-eats
whitemeat: birds
wildanimals: deer,boar
wildbirds: quail
Although you can figure out what the name ted-eats ultimately expands to, it is far
easier to have sendmail do it for you.
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