forward(5) [freebsd man page]

FORWARD(5)						      BSD File Formats Manual							FORWARD(5)

NAME

     forward -- mail forwarding instructions

DESCRIPTION

     The .forward file contains a list of mail addresses or programs that the user's mail should be redirected to.  If the file is not present,
     then no mail forwarding will be done.  Mail may also be forwarded as the standard input to a program by prefixing the line with the normal
     shell pipe symbol (|).  If arguments are to be passed to the command, then the entire line should be enclosed in quotes.  For security rea-
     sons, the .forward file must be owned by the user the mail is being sent to, or by root, and the user's shell must be listed in /etc/shells.

     For example, if a .forward file contained the following lines:

	   nobody@FreeBSD.org
	   "|/usr/bin/vacation nobody"

     Mail would be forwarded to <nobody@FreeBSD.org> and to the program /usr/bin/vacation with the single argument nobody.

     If a local user address is prefixed with a backslash character, mail is delivered directly to the user's mail spool file, bypassing further
     redirection.

     For example, if user chris had a .forward file containing the following lines:

	   chris@otherhost
	   chris

     One copy of mail would be forwarded to chris@otherhost and another copy would be retained as mail for local user chris.

FILES

     $HOME/.forward  The user's forwarding instructions.

SEE ALSO

     aliases(5), mailaddr(7), sendmail(8)

BSD
								   July 2, 1996 							       BSD

forward(4)						     Kernel Interfaces Manual							forward(4)

NAME

       forward - forward mail

SYNOPSIS

       /var/adm/forward/username $HOME/.forward

DESCRIPTION

       The .forward file allows a user to forward messages to another host, or to invoke programs (such as vacation(1)) to process their mail.	It
       is formatted as a series of comma-separated addresses in the form: addr_1, addr_2, ...  Alternatively, each address can be  on  a  separate
       line.

       The newer sendmail.v8 program also allows the use of comments (lines that begin with a ``#'') and blank lines.

       As  with the aliases(4) file, mail messages can be forwarded to another host or given to programs for further processing.  The following is
       an example of the vacation program. Assuming that the user's name is myra, create a .forward  file  and	add  the  following  line:  myra,
       "|/usr/bin/vacation myra"

       The  previous  example  forwards mail to myra (the backslash prevents an accidental aliasing loop), and also sends a copy of the message to
       the vacation program.

       For security reasons, the file must be owned by the user or by root and it should be writable only by the file  owner.	In  addition,  the
       file must be readable by the owner (myra) or root.

       On  traditional	systems,  only	the  $HOME/.forward file is checked.  The sendmail.v8 program allows the use of the system-wide forwarding
       directory /var/adm/forward.  By default, this directory is checked for a forward file prior to examining the users $HOME directory.

FILES

       System-wide forwarding file.  The per-user forwarding file.

RESTRICTIONS

       The sendmail command can hang trying to read the user's $HOME/.forward file.  If the user's home directory is NFS-mounted  and  temporarily
       unavailable, sendmail will stall until the directory becomes available again.  The use of non-NFS mounted directories for the forwarding of
       files is recommended.

       The use of /var/adm/forward is supported only by sendmail.v8.

       The actual path for /var/adm/forward is configurable in the sendmail.cf file.

       Incorrect file permissions/ownership are quietly ignored.

       It is easy to create an accidental loop, for example, on host_a myra@host_b and on host_b myra@host_a

RELATED INFORMATION

       Commands:  aliases(4), sendmail.cf(4), sendmail(8) delim off

																	forward(4)