vacation(1) [osf1 man page]
vacation(1) General Commands Manual vacation(1) NAME
vacation - Informs senders of mail that recipient is absent SYNOPSIS
vacation -I The vacation command returns a message to the sender of a mail message, saying that the recipient is on vacation or otherwise absent. OPTIONS
Initializes the $HOME/.vacation.pag and $HOME/.vacation.dir files. Execute this option before you modify your $HOME/.forward file. DESCRIPTION
The vacation command accepts standard input and attempts to send a vacation message to the user specified in that input, which should be a mail message. The vacation command is usually invoked in your $HOME/.forward file, which is used to forward your mail to another username. When you want vacation messages to be sent to users who send you mail, enter the following in your $HOME/.forward file: user, "|vacation user" Replace user by your username. This allows mail sent to you to be both received by you and piped to the vacation command; vacation reads the mail message, determines the sender, and sends a reply. The sender receives a vacation message, and the original mail is waiting in your mailbox when you return. When vacation is invoked without the -I option, as in the file, it reads the first line from the standard input for a From line to deter- mine the sender. If this is not present, an error message is produced. (All properly formatted incoming mail should include a From line.) No vacation message is sent if the From header line indicates that the message is from Postmaster; from MAILER-DAEMON; if the initial From line includes the string -REQUEST@; or if a Precedence: bulk or Precedence: junk line is included in the header. You must initialize vacation for your username by issuing the command vacation -I before you can use the vacation command. The vacation command expects a $HOME/.vacation.msg file containing a message to be sent back to each sender. The file should be an entire message, including any desired headers, such as From or Subject. This message will be sent only once a week to each unique message sender. (If this file does not exist, vacation uses /usr/share/lib/vacation.def, a system-wide default vacation message, if it exists.) The names of people who have sent you messages are kept in the files $HOME/.vacation.pag and $HOME/.vacation.dir. These files are created when you initialize vacation for your username with vacation -I. EXAMPLES
If your username is myra and you want to send a message once a week to each person who has sent you mail, initialize vacation by entering: vacation -I Next, add the following line to your $HOME/.forward file (create this file if it does not exist): myra, "|vacation myra" If you want to send a vacation message other than the system default message in /usr/share/lib/vacation.def, create the file in your home directory and enter the message in it. For example: From: myra@k.table (Myra Louise Minter) Subject: I am on vacation. Delivered-By-the-Graces-Of: the Vacation program I am on vacation until October 1. If you have something urgent, please telephone Lucy or Sue. -- Myra FILES
System-wide default vacation message. Contains address to which mail is forwarded. Contains the names of people who have sent you mail while the vacation command was being used. Contains the names of people who have sent you mail while the vacation command was being used. Contains your personal vacation message. SEE ALSO
Commands: mail(1), mailx(1), sendmail(8) vacation(1)
Check Out this Related Man Page
VACATION(1) General Commands Manual VACATION(1) NAME
vacation - E-mail auto-responder SYNOPSIS
vacation [-a alias] [-C cffile] [-d] [-f database] [-i] [-I] [-j] [-l] [-m message] [-R returnaddr] [-r interval] [-s address] [-t time] [-U] [-x] [-z] login DESCRIPTION
Vacation returns a message, ~/.vacation.msg by default, to the sender informing them that you are currently not reading your mail. The message is only sent to each sender once per reply interval (see -r below). The intended use is in a .forward file. For example, your .forward file might have: eric, "|/usr/bin/vacation -a allman eric" which would send messages to you (assuming your login name was eric) and reply to any messages for ``eric'' or ``allman''. Available options: -a alias Handle messages for alias in the same manner as those received for the user's login name. -C cfpath Specify pathname of the sendmail configuration file. This option is ignored if -U is specified. This option defaults to the stan- dard sendmail configuration file, located at /etc/mail/sendmail.cf on most systems. -d Send error/debug messages to stderr instead of syslog. Otherwise, fatal errors, such as calling vacation with incorrect arguments, or with non-existent logins, are logged in the system log file, using syslog(8). This should only be used on the command line, not in your .forward file. -f filename Use filename as name of the database instead of ~/.vacation.db or ~/.vacation.{dir,pag}. Unless the filename starts with / it is relative to ~. -i Initialize the vacation database files. It should be used before you modify your .forward file. This should only be used on the command line, not in your .forward file. -I Same as -i (for backwards compatibility). This should only be used on the command line, not in your .forward file. -j Respond to the message regardless of whether the login is listed as a recipient for the message. Do not use this flag unless you are sure of the consequences. For example, this will cause to reply to mailing list messages which may result in removing you from the list. -l List the content of the vacation database file including the address and the associated time of the last auto-response to that address. This should only be used on the command line, not in your .forward file. -m filename Use filename as name of the file containing the message to send instead of ~/.vacation.msg. Unless the filename starts with / it is relative to ~. -R returnaddr Set the reply envelope sender address -r interval Set the reply interval to interval days. The default is one week. An interval of ``0'' or ``infinite'' (actually, any non-numeric character) will never send more than one reply. The -r option should only be used when the vacation database is initialized (see -i above). -s address Use address instead of the incoming message sender address on the From line as the recipient for the vacation message. -t time Ignored, available only for compatibility with Sun's vacation program. -U Do not attempt to lookup login in the password file. The -f and -m options must be used to specify the database and message file since there is no home directory for the default settings for these options. -x Reads an exclusion list from stdin (one address per line). Mails coming from an address in this exclusion list won't get a reply by vacation. It is possible to exclude complete domains by specifying ``@domain'' as element of the exclusion list. This should only be used on the command line, not in your .forward file. -z Set the sender of the vacation message to ``<>'' instead of the user. This probably violates the RFCs since vacation messages are not required by a standards-track RFC to have a null reverse-path. Vacation reads the first line from the standard input for a UNIX ``From'' line to determine the sender. Sendmail(8) includes this ``From'' line automatically. No message will be sent unless login (or an alias supplied using the -a option) is part of either the ``To:'' or ``Cc:'' headers of the mail. No messages from ``???-REQUEST'', ``???-RELAY'', ``???-OWNER'', ``OWNER-???'', ``Postmaster'', ``UUCP'', ``MAILER'', or ``MAILER- DAEMON'' will be replied to (where these strings are case insensitive) nor is a notification sent if a ``Precedence: bulk'' or ``Prece- dence: junk'' line is included in the mail headers. The people who have sent you messages are maintained as a db(3) or dbm(3) database in the file .vacation.db or .vacation.{dir,pag} in your home directory. Vacation expects a file .vacation.msg, in your home directory, containing a message to be sent back to each sender. It should be an entire message (including headers). For example, it might contain: From: eric@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman) Subject: I am on vacation Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: The Vacation program Precedence: bulk I am on vacation until July 22. If you have something urgent, please contact Keith Bostic <bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU>. --eric FILES
~/.vacation.db default database file for db(3) ~/.vacation.{dir,pag} default database file for dbm(3) ~/.vacation.msg default message to send SEE ALSO
sendmail(8), syslog(8) HISTORY
The vacation command appeared in 4.3BSD. $Date: 2002/06/27 23:51:52 $ VACATION(1)