.forward
file.
stderr
as well as logged.
Never
use this option on the invocation in your
~/.forward
file!
~/.vacation.db
.
~/.forward
file, and it must
never
be used on the invocation in your
~/.forward
file. Except when listing the contents the database will always be
created if it does not exist so this option is only necessary if you
want to clear an existing database and perhaps set a new reply interval.
~/.vacation.msg
.
~/.vacation.db
file and is usually used with the
-i
option. The default reply interval is one week. An interval of
zero
(``0'')
is not allowed as that would mean a reply would be sent to each message,
which could accidentally cause a mail loop between another less
carefully programmed autoresponder. An interval of
``
infinite
''
will never send more than one reply.
No messages from ``-OUTGOING'', ``-RELAY'', ``LISTSERV'', ``-REQUEST'', ``MAILER'', or ``MAILER-DAEMON'' will be replied to (where these strings are case insensitive suffixes of the base mailbox name for the sender or originator address).
Finally, and most importantly, no notification is sent if a ``Precedence:'' header is found that contains the value ``bulk'', ``list'', or ``junk''.
vacation
expects to find a file called
.vacation.msg
,
in your home directory (or whatever file was specified with
-m),
containing an RFC-2822 compliant message to be sent back in response to
an incoming message. It must be an entire message, including headers,
but without recipient headers, and
especially
without the
UNIX
mailbox
``From_''
header). The recipient address(es) will be supplied in a
``to:''
header that will be automatically prepended to the message. Any
occurrence of the string
``$SUBJECT''
will be replaced by the content of the
``subject:''
header from the message being read on the standard input. A
``Precedence: bulk''
header is also automatically prepended to the message.
The reply is sent to the address(es) given in the ``reply-to:'' header if one is found, and if not then to the address(es) given in the ``from:'' header (as per the RFC-2822 rules for replying to a message).
The addresses to which replies have been sent are recorded, along with
the time a reply was sent to them, in a
db(3)
database in the file
.vacation.db
in your home directory. No reply will be sent to any address which has
been logged in this file unless the last reply was sent more than
interval
(see
-r
above) days ago.
Fatal errors, such as calling
vacation
with incorrect arguments, or with a non-existent
logins,
and any errors accessing files or errors sending messages are logged in
the system log file, using
syslog(3)
,
and if
-d
is given they are also printed to the standard error descriptor.
sysexits.h
>.
~/.vacation.db
~/.vacation.msg
~/.forward
file might contain:
\eric, "|/usr/bin/vacation"
which would save messages sent to you in your system mailbox (assuming
your login name was eric) and would also reply with copies of your
~/.vacation.msg
message (modulo the constraints outlined above).
An example
~/.vacation.msg
file might contain a message similar to the following:
From: eric@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman) Subject: I am on vacation Summary: Re: $SUBJECT Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: The Vacation programI am on vacation until July 22. If you have something urgent, please contact Keith Bostic
. -- eric
syslog(3)
,
sendmail(8)
vacation
was rewritten by Greg A. Woods
<woods@planix.com
>
to obey RFC-2822.
LONG_MAX
.
There's no facility for folding or filling text or headers in the outgoing message.
The entire recipient address of a sent reply, comments, multiple addresses, and all, is stored in the recent recipients database.