# postalias(1) - man - phpMan [POSTALIAS(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/POSTALIAS/1/markdown) General Commands Manual [POSTALIAS(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/POSTALIAS/1/markdown) ## NAME postalias - Postfix alias database maintenance ## SYNOPSIS **postalias** [**-Nfinoprsuvw**] [**-c** _config_dir_] [**-d** _key_] [**-q** _key_] [_file_type_:]_file_name_ ... ## DESCRIPTION The [**postalias**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postalias/1/markdown) command creates or queries one or more Postfix alias databases, or updates an existing one. The input and output file formats are expected to be compatible with Send‐ mail version 8, and are expected to be suitable for the use as NIS alias maps. If the result files do not exist they will be created with the same group and other read per‐ missions as their source file. While a database update is in progress, signal delivery is postponed, and an exclusive, advi‐ sory, lock is placed on the entire database, in order to avoid surprises in spectator pro‐ cesses. The format of Postfix alias input files is described in [**aliases**(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/aliases/5/markdown). By default the lookup key is mapped to lowercase to make the lookups case insensitive; as of Postfix 2.3 this case folding happens only with tables whose lookup keys are fixed-case strings such as btree:, dbm: or hash:. With earlier versions, the lookup key is folded even with tables where a lookup field can match both upper and lower case text, such as regexp: and pcre:. This resulted in loss of information with $_number_ substitutions. Options: ### -c Read the **main.cf** configuration file in the named directory instead of the default con‐ figuration directory. ### -d zero when the requested information was found. If a key value of **-** is specified, the program reads key values from the standard input stream. The exit status is zero when at least one of the requested keys was found. ### -f With Postfix version 2.3 and later, this option has no effect for regular expression tables. There, case folding is controlled by appending a flag to a pattern. ### -i database. By default, [**postalias**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postalias/1/markdown) creates a new database from the entries in _file_name_. ### -N fault, [**postalias**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postalias/1/markdown) does whatever is the default for the host operating system. ### -n By default, [**postalias**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postalias/1/markdown) does whatever is the default for the host operating system. ### -o [**postalias**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postalias/1/markdown) drops root privileges and runs as the source file owner instead. ### -p file. Instead, create a new file with default access permissions (mode 0644). ### -q put stream. The exit status is zero when the requested information was found. Note: this performs a single query with the key as specified, and does not make itera‐ tive queries with substrings of the key as described in the [aliases(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/aliases/5/markdown) manual page. If a key value of **-** is specified, the program reads key values from the standard input stream and writes one line of _key:_ _value_ output for each key that was found. The exit status is zero when at least one of the requested keys was found. ### -r make those updates anyway. ### -s ment. The elements are printed in database order, which is not necessarily the same as the original input order. This feature is available in Postfix version 2.2 and later, and is not available for all database types. ### -u yes". It requires that keys and values are valid UTF-8 strings. ### -v -v increasingly verbose. ### -w ignore those attempts. Arguments: _file_type_ The database type. To find out what types are supported, use the "**postconf** **-m**" com‐ mand. The [**postalias**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postalias/1/markdown) command can query any supported file type, but it can create only the following file types: **btree** The output is a btree file, named _file_name_**.db**. This is available on systems with support for **db** databases. **cdb** The output is one file named _file_name_**.cdb**. This is available on systems with support for **cdb** databases. **dbm** The output consists of two files, named _file_name_**.pag** and _file_name_**.dir**. This is available on systems with support for **dbm** databases. **fail** A table that reliably fails all requests. The lookup table name is used for logging only. This table exists to simplify Postfix error tests. **hash** The output is a hashed file, named _file_name_**.db**. This is available on systems with support for **db** databases. **lmdb** The output is a btree-based file, named _file_name_**.lmdb**. **lmdb** supports concur‐ rent writes and reads from different processes, unlike other supported file-based tables. This is available on systems with support for **lmdb** data‐ bases. **sdbm** The output consists of two files, named _file_name_**.pag** and _file_name_**.dir**. This is available on systems with support for **sdbm** databases. When no _file_type_ is specified, the software uses the database type specified via the **default**___**database**___**type** configuration parameter. The default value for this parameter depends on the host environment. _file_name_ The name of the alias database source file when creating a database. ## DIAGNOSTICS Problems are logged to the standard error stream and to [**syslogd**(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/syslogd/8/markdown) or [**postlogd**(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postlogd/8/markdown). No output means that no problems were detected. Duplicate entries are skipped and are flagged with a warning. [**postalias**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postalias/1/markdown) terminates with zero exit status in case of success (including successful "**postalias** **-q**" lookup) and terminates with non-zero exit status in case of failure. ## ENVIRONMENT **MAIL**___**CONFIG** Directory with Postfix configuration files. **MAIL**___**VERBOSE** Enable verbose logging for debugging purposes. ## CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS The following **main.cf** parameters are especially relevant to this program. The text below provides only a parameter summary. See [**postconf**(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postconf/5/markdown) for more details including examples. **alias**___**database** **(see** **'postconf** **-d'** **output)** The alias databases for [**local**(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/local/8/markdown) delivery that are updated with "**newaliases**" or with "**sendmail** **-bi**". **config**___**directory** **(see** **'postconf** **-d'** **output)** The default location of the Postfix main.cf and master.cf configuration files. **berkeley**___**db**___**create**___**buffer**___**size** **(16777216)** The per-table I/O buffer size for programs that create Berkeley DB hash or btree ta‐ bles. **berkeley**___**db**___**read**___**buffer**___**size** **(131072)** The per-table I/O buffer size for programs that read Berkeley DB hash or btree tables. **default**___**database**___**type** **(see** **'postconf** **-d'** **output)** The default database type for use in [**newaliases**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/newaliases/1/markdown), [**postalias**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postalias/1/markdown) and [**postmap**(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postmap/1/markdown) com‐ mands. **import**___**environment** **(see** **'postconf** **-d'** **output)** The list of environment parameters that a privileged Postfix process will import from a non-Postfix parent process, or name=value environment overrides. **smtputf8**___**enable** **(yes)** Enable preliminary SMTPUTF8 support for the protocols described in RFC 6531..6533. **syslog**___**facility** **(mail)** The syslog facility of Postfix logging. **syslog**___**name** **(see** **'postconf** **-d'** **output)** A prefix that is prepended to the process name in syslog records, so that, for exam‐ ple, "smtpd" becomes "prefix/smtpd". Available in Postfix 2.11 and later: **lmdb**___**map**___**size** **(16777216)** The initial OpenLDAP LMDB database size limit in bytes. ## STANDARDS RFC 822 (ARPA Internet Text Messages) ## SEE ALSO [aliases(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/aliases/5/markdown), format of alias database input file. [local(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/local/8/markdown), Postfix local delivery agent. [postconf(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postconf/1/markdown), supported database types [postconf(5)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postconf/5/markdown), configuration parameters [postmap(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postmap/1/markdown), create/update/query lookup tables [newaliases(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/newaliases/1/markdown), Sendmail compatibility interface. [postlogd(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/postlogd/8/markdown), Postfix logging [syslogd(8)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/syslogd/8/markdown), system logging ## README FILES Use "**postconf** **readme**___**directory**" or "**postconf** **html**___**directory**" to locate this information. DATABASE_README, Postfix lookup table overview ## LICENSE The Secure Mailer license must be distributed with this software. **AUTHOR(S)** Wietse Venema IBM T.J. Watson Research P.O. Box 704 Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA Wietse Venema Google, Inc. 111 8th Avenue New York, NY 10011, USA [POSTALIAS(1)](https://www.chedong.com/phpMan.php/man/POSTALIAS/1/markdown)