sendmail, 4th Edition

Verbose

Run in verbose mode All versions

The sendmail program offers a verbose mode of operation. In this “blow-by-blow” mode, a description of all the sendmail program’s actions is printed to the standard output. This mode is valuable in running sendmail interactively but must not be used when running in daemon mode. Consequently, you should never set this option in the sendmail.cf file. Instead, you should set it from the command line using the -v command-line switch.

After the sendmail.cf file is parsed and the command-line arguments have been processed, sendmail checks to see whether it is in verbose mode. If it is, it sets the HoldExpensive option (don’t connect to expensive mailers, HoldExpensive on page 1036) to false and sets the DeliveryMode option (DeliveryMode on page 1004) to interactive.

The forms of the Verbose option are as follows:

-v                ← command-line shorthand
O Verbose=bool    ← configuration file (V8.7 and later)
-OVerbose=bool    ← command line (V8.7 and later)
Ovbool            ← configuration file (deprecated)
-ovbool           ← command line (deprecated)

The argument bool is of type Boolean. If it is missing, the default value is true (be verbose). If the entire option is missing, the default value is false (be quiet).

Note that setting restrictexpand (PrivacyOptions=restrictexpand (V8.12 and later) on page 1069), with the PrivacyOptions option, disables this Verbose option.

The Verbose option is safe. When it is specified from the command line, sendmail retains its special privileges. Note ...