FORWARD(5) | File Formats Manual | FORWARD(5) |
NAME
forward
— email
forwarding information file
DESCRIPTION
Users may put a .forward
file in their
home directory. If this file exists,
smtpd(8) forwards email to the
destinations specified therein.
A .forward
file contains a list of
expansion values, as described in
aliases(5). Each expansion value
should be on a line by itself. However, the .forward
mechanism differs from the aliases mechanism in that it disallows file
inclusion (:include:) and it performs expansion under the user ID of the
.forward
file owner.
Permissions on the .forward
file are very
strict and expansion is rejected if the file is group or world-writable; if
the home directory is group writeable; or if the file is not owned by the
user.
Users should avoid editing the .forward
file directly, to prevent delivery failures from occurring if a message
arrives while the file is not fully written. The best option is to use a
temporary file and use the mv(1)
command to atomically overwrite the former .forward
.
Alternatively, setting the
sticky(8) bit on the home
directory will cause the .forward
lookup to return a
temporary failure, causing mails to be deferred.
FILES
- ~/.forward
- Email forwarding information.
EXAMPLES
The following file forwards mail to “user@example.com”, and pipes the same mail to “examplemda”.
# empty lines are ignored user@example.com # anything after # is ignored "|/path/to/examplemda"
SEE ALSO
February 13, 2021 | Linux 6.10.2-arch1-1 |