Each mail service includes at least one of each of the following software components.
This section also describes these software components.
The mail user agent is the program that acts as the interface between the user and mail transfer agent. The sendmail program is a mail transfer agent. The Oracle Solaris operating system supplies the following mail user agents.
/usr/bin/mail
/usr/bin/mailx
The mail transfer agent is responsible for the routing of mail messages and the resolution of mail addresses. This agent is also known as a mail transport agent. The transfer agent for the Oracle Solaris operating system is sendmail. The transfer agent performs these functions.
Accepts messages from the mail user agent
Resolves destination addresses
Selects a proper delivery agent to deliver the mail
Receives incoming mail from other mail transfer agents
A local delivery agent is a program that implements a mail delivery protocol. The following local delivery agents are provided with the Oracle Solaris operating system.
The UUCP local delivery agent, which uses uux to deliver mail
The local delivery agent, which is mail.local in the standard Oracle Solaris release
Changes From Version 8.12 of sendmail provides information on these related topics.
Additional Delivery Agent Flags From Version 8.12 of sendmail
Additional Equates for Delivery Agents From Version 8.12 of sendmail
Mailer is a sendmail-specific term. A mailer is used by sendmail to identify a specific instance of a customized local delivery agent or a customized mail transfer agent. You need to specify at least one mailer in your sendmail.cf file. For task information, refer to Changing the sendmail Configuration in Chapter 2, Administering Mail Services. This section provides a brief description of two types of mailers.
For additional information about mailers, see http://www.sendmail.org/m4/readme.htmlhttp://www.sendmail.org/m4/readme.html or /etc/mail/cf/README.
SMTP is the standard mail protocol that is used on the Internet. This protocol defines these mailers.
smtp provides regular SMTP transfers to other servers.
esmtp provides extended SMTP transfers to other servers.
smtp8 provides SMTP transfers to other servers without converting 8-bit data to MIME.
dsmtp provides on-demand delivery by using the F=% mailer flag. Refer to Changes to the MAILER() Declaration From Version 8.12 of sendmail and Additional Delivery Agent Flags From Version 8.12 of sendmail.
If possible, avoid using UUCP. For an explanation, refer to http://www.sendmail.org/m4/uucp_mailers.htmlhttp://www.sendmail.org/m4/uucp_mailers.html or do a search in /etc/mail/cf/README on this string: USING UUCP MAILERS.
UUCP defines these mailers.
Names in the $=U class are sent to uucp-old. uucp is the obsolete name for this mailer. The uucp-old mailer uses an exclamation-point address in the headers.
Names in the $=Y class are sent to uucp-new. Use this mailer when you know that the receiving UUCP mailer can manage multiple recipients in one transfer. suucp is the obsolete name for this mailer. The uucp-new mailer also uses an exclamation-point address in the headers.
If MAILER(smtp) is also specified in your configuration, two more mailers are defined.
This mailer uses domain-style addresses and, basically, applies the SMTP rewriting rules.
Names in the $=Z class are sent to uucp-uudom. uucp-uudom and uucp-dom use the same header address format, domain-style addresses.
The mail address contains the name of the recipient and the system to which the mail message is delivered. When you administer a small mail system that does not use a name service, addressing mail is easy. The login names uniquely identify the users. Complexity is introduced if you are administering a mail system that has more than one system with mailboxes or that has one or more domains. Additional complexity can be generated if you have a UUCP (or other) mail connection to servers outside your network. The information in the following sections can help you understand the parts and complexities of a mail address.
Email addressing uses domains. A domain is a directory structure for network address naming. A domain can have one or more subdomains. The domain and subdomains of an address can be compared to the hierarchy of a file system. Just as a subdirectory is considered to be inside the directory above it, each subdomain in a mail address is considered to be inside the location to its right.
The following table shows some top-level domains.
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Domains are case insensitive. You can use uppercase, lowercase, or mixed-case letters in the domain part of an address without making any errors.
When you are working with name service domain names and mail domain names, remember the following.
By default, the sendmail program strips the first component from the NIS domain name to form the mail domain name. For example, if an NIS domain name were bldg5.example.com, its mail domain name would be example.com.
Although mail domain addresses are case insensitive, the NIS domain name is not. For the best results, use lowercase characters when setting up the mail and NIS domain names.
The DNS domain name and the mail domain name must be identical.
For more information, refer to Interactions of sendmail With Name Services.
Typically, a mail address has the following format. For further details, refer to Route–Independent Mail Addresses.
user@subdomain. ... .subdomain2.subdomain1.top-level-domain
The part of the address to the left of the @ sign is the local address. The local address can contain the following.
Information about routing with another mail transport (for example, bob::vmsvax@gateway or smallberries%mill.uucp@gateway)
An alias (for example, iggy.ignatz)
The part of the address to the right of the @ sign shows the domain levels, which is where the local address resides. A dot separates each subdomain. The domain part of the address can be an organization, a physical area, or a geographic region. Furthermore, the order of domain information is hierarchical, so the more local the subdomain, the closer the subdomain is to the @ sign.
Mail addresses can be route independent. Route-independent addressing requires the sender of an email message to specify the name of the recipient and the final destination. A high-speed network, such as the Internet, uses route-independent addresses. Route-independent addresses can have this format.
user@host.domain
Route-independent addresses for UUCP connections can have this address format.
host.domain!user
The increased popularity of the domain-hierarchical naming scheme for computers is making route-independent addresses more common. Actually, the most common route-independent address omits the host name and relies on the domain name service to properly identify the final destination of the email message.
user@domain
Route-independent addresses are first read by searching for the @ sign. The domain hierarchy is then read from the right (the highest level) to the left (the most specific part of the address to the right of the @ sign).
A mailbox is a file that is the final destination for email messages. The name of the mailbox can be the user name or the identity of a specific function, such as the postmaster. Mailboxes are in the /var/mail/username file, which can exist either on the user's local system or on a remote mail server. In either instance, the mailbox is on the system to which the mail is delivered.
Mail should always be delivered to a local file system so that the user agent can pull mail from the mail spool and store it readily in the local mailbox. Do not use NFS-mounted file systems as the destination for a user's mailbox. Specifically, do not direct mail to a mail client that is mounting the /var/mail file system from a remote server. Mail for the user, in this instance, should be addressed to the mail server and not to the client host name. NFS-mounted file systems can cause problems with mail delivery and handling.
The /etc/mail/aliases file and name services such as NIS provide mechanisms for creating aliases for electronic mail addresses. So, users do not need to know the precise local name of a user's mailbox.
The following table shows some common naming conventions for special-purpose mailboxes.
Starting with sendmail version 8, the envelope sender for mail that is sent to a group alias has been changed to the address that is expanded from the owner alias, if an owner alias exists. This change enables any mail errors to be sent to the alias owner, rather than being returned to the sender. With this change, users notice that mail that was sent to an alias looks as if the mail came from the alias owner, when delivered. The following alias format helps with some of the problems that are associated with this change.
mygroup: :include:/pathname/mygroup.list owner-mygroup: mygroup-request mygroup-request: sandys, ignatz
In this example, the mygroup alias is the actual mail alias for the group. The owner-mygroup alias receives error messages. The mygroup-request alias should be used for administrative requests. This structure means that in mail sent to the mygroup alias, the envelope sender changes to mygroup-request.
An alias is an alternate name. For email, you can use aliases to assign a mailbox location or to define mailing lists. For a task map, refer to Administering Mail Alias Files (Task Map) in Chapter 2, Administering Mail Services. Also, you can refer to Mail Alias Files in this chapter.
For large sites, the mail alias typically defines the location of a mailbox. Providing a mail alias is like providing a room number as part of the address for an individual at a large corporation that occupies multiple rooms. If you do not provide the room number, the mail is delivered to a central address. Without a room number, extra effort is required to determine where within the building the mail is to be delivered. So, the possibility of an error increases. For example, if two people who are named Kevin Smith are in the same building, only one of them might get mail. To correct the problem, each Kevin Smith should have a room number added to his address.
Use domains and location-independent addresses as much as possible when you create mailing lists. To enhance portability and flexibility of alias files, make your alias entries in mailing lists as generic and system independent as possible. For example, if you have a user who is named ignatz on system mars, in domain example.com, create the alias ignatz@example instead of ignatz@mars. If user ignatz changes the name of his system but remains within the example domain, you do not need to update alias files to reflect the change in system name.
When you create alias entries, type one alias per line. You should have only one entry that contains the user's system name. For example, you could create the following entries for user ignatz.
ignatz: iggy.ignatz iggyi: iggy.ignatz iggy.ignatz: ignatz@mars
You can create an alias for local names or domains. For example, an alias entry for user fred, who has a mailbox on the system mars and is in the domain planets, could have this entry in the NIS aliases map.
fred: fred@planets
When you create mail lists that include users outside your domain, create the alias with the user name and the domain name. For example, if you have a user who is named smallberries on system privet, in domain example.com, create the alias as [email protected]. The email address of the sender is now automatically translated to a fully qualified domain name when mail goes outside the user's domain.
The following list describes methods for creating and administering mail alias files.
You can create mail aliases for global use in the NIS aliases map or in local /etc/mail/aliases files. You can also create and administer mailing lists that use the same alias files.
Depending on the configuration of your mail services, you can administer aliases by using the NIS name service to maintain a global aliases database. Otherwise, you could update all the local /etc/mail/aliases files to keep the aliases synchronized.
Users can also create and use aliases. Users can create aliases either in their local ~/.mailrc file, which only the user can use, or in their local /etc/mail/aliases file, which anyone can use. Users cannot normally create or administer NIS alias files.