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)
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vacation(1) User Commands vacation(1) NAME
vacation - reply to mail automatically SYNOPSIS
vacation [-I] vacation [-a alias] [-e filter_file] [-f database_file] [-j] [-m message_file] [-s sender] [-tN] username DESCRIPTION
The vacation utility automatically replies to incoming mail. Installation The installation consists of an interactive program which sets up vacation's basic configuration. To install vacation, type it with no arguments on the command line. The program creates a .vacation.msg file, which contains the message that is automatically sent to all senders when vacation is enabled, and starts an editor for you to modify the message. (See USAGE sec- tion.) Which editor is invoked is determined by the VISUAL or EDITOR environment variable, or vi(1) if neither of those environment vari- ables are set. A .forward file is also created if one does not exist in your home directory. Once created, the .forward file will contain a line of the form: One copy of an incoming message is sent to the username and another copy is piped into vacation: username, "|/usr/bin/vacation username" If a .forward file is present in your home directory, it will ask whether you want to remove it, which disables vacation and ends the installation. The program automatically creates .vacation.pag and .vacation.dir, which contain a list of senders when vacation is enabled. Activation and Deactivation The presence of the .forward file determines whether or not vacation is disabled or enabled. To disable vacation, remove the .forward file, or move it to a new name. Initialization The -I option clears the vacation log files, .vacation.pag and .vacation.dir, erasing the list of senders from a previous vacation session. (See OPTIONS section.) Additional Configuration vacation provides configuration options that are not part of the installation, these being -a, -e, -f, -j, -m, -s, and -t. (See OPTIONS section.) OPTIONS
The following options are supported: -I Initializes the .vacation.pag and .vacation.dir files and enables vacation. If the -I flag is not specified, and a user argument is given, vacation reads the first line from the standard input (for a From: line, no colon). If absent, it produces an error mes- sage. Options -a, -e, -f, -j, -m, -s, and -t are configuration options to be used in conjunction with vacation in the .forward file, not on the command line. For example, username, "|/usr/bin/vacation -t1m username" repeats replies to the sender every minute. -a alias Indicates that alias is one of the valid aliases for the user running vacation, so that mail addressed to that alias generates a reply. -e filter_file Uses filter_file instead of .vacation.filter as the source of the domain and email address filters. -f database_file Uses database_file instead of .vacation as the base name for the database file. -j Does not check whether the recipient appears in the To: or the Cc: line. Warning: use of this option can result in vacation replies being sent to mailing lists and other inappropriate places; its use is therefore strongly discour- aged. -m message_file Uses ~/message_file as the message to send for the reply instead of ~/.vacation.msg. message_file is a relative path to the desired vacation message file. To prevent directory/file "not found" errors, message_file should be on the same disk partition as ~/.forward. -s sender Replies to sender instead of the value read from the UNIX From line of the incoming message. -tN Changes the interval between repeat replies to the same sender. The default is 1 week. A trailing s, m, h, d, or w scales N to seconds, minutes, hours, days, or weeks, respectively. USAGE
.vacation.msg should include a header with at least a Subject: line (it should not include a To: line). For example: Subject: I am on vacation I am on vacation until July 22. If you have something urgent, please contact Joe Jones (jones@fB0). --John If the string $SUBJECT appears in the .vacation.msg file, it is replaced with the subject of the original message when the reply is sent. Thus, a .vacation.msg file such as Subject: I am on vacation I am on vacation until July 22. Your mail regarding "$SUBJECT" will be read when I return. If you have something urgent, please contact Joe Jones (jones@fB0). --John will include the subject of the message in the reply. No message is sent if the To: or the Cc: line does not list the user to whom the original message was sent or one of a number of aliases for them, if the initial From line includes the string -REQUEST@, or if a Precedence: bulk or Precedence: junk line is included in the header. vacation will also not respond to mail from either postmaster or Mailer-Daemon. In addition to the above criteria, if a .vacation.filter file exists, it is used to constrain further the set of addresses to which a reply is sent. Each line in that file should be either a domain name or an email address. If the incoming sender address matches one of the lines in the file, a reply is sent. If no lines match, no reply is sent. For lines containing an email address, the match must be exact, except for case, which is ignored. For lines containing a domain name, the sender address must be either something@domain-name or something@some- thing.domain-name. A sample filter file might look like the following: sun.com mydomain.com onefriend@hisisp.com anotherfriend@herisp.com Note: Blank lines and lines starting with "#" are ignored. FILES
~/.forward ~/.vacation.filter ~/.vacation.msg A list of senders is kept in the dbm format files .vacation.pag and .vacation.dir in your home directory. These files are dbm files and cannot be viewed directly with text editors. ATTRIBUTES
See attributes(5) for descriptions of the following attributes: +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ | ATTRIBUTE TYPE | ATTRIBUTE VALUE | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ |Availability |SUNWsndmu | +-----------------------------+-----------------------------+ SEE ALSO
vi(1), sendmail(1M), dbm(3UCB), getusershell(3C), aliases(4), shells(4), attributes(5) SunOS 5.10 19 Mar 2004 vacation(1)