sendmail, 4th Edition

CheckAliases

Check righthand side of aliases V8.1 and later

Ordinarily, when sendmail rebuilds an aliases database (as defined by the AliasFile option, AliasFile on page 970), it checks only the addresses to the left of the colon to make sure they all resolve to a delivery agent that has the F=A flag set (F=A on page 767). It is possible to also have addresses to the right of the colon checked for validity by setting the CheckAliases option to true.

The forms of the CheckAliases option are as follows:

O CheckAliases=bool                ← configuration file (V8.7 and later)
-OCheckAliases=bool                ← command line (V8.7 and later)
define(`confCHECK_ALIASES',True)   ← mc configuration (V8.7 and later)
Onbool                             ← configuration file (deprecated)
-onbool                            ← command line (deprecated)
-on                                ← commandline shorthand (V8.7 and later)

The bool is of type Boolean. If it is absent, the option defaults to true (do check the RHS of aliases). If the entire option declaration is missing, the default is false (don’t check the RHS of aliases). The default for the mc configuration technique is false.

Addresses to the right of the colon are checked only to be sure they are good addresses. Each is processed by the canonify rule set 3 and then the parse rule set 0 to select a delivery agent. Processing merely needs successfully to select any non-#error delivery agent (see error on page 720). The sendmail program prints and logs the following warning and skips any address that fails to select a valid delivery agent:

address... bad address ...