qmail-getpw(8)        Maintenance Procedures       qmail-getpw(8)



NAME
     qmail-getpw - give addresses to users

SYNOPSIS
     qmail-getpw local

DESCRIPTION
     In   qmail,  each  user  controls  a  vast  array  of  local
     addresses.  qmail-getpw finds the user that controls a  par-
     ticular  address,  local.   It prints six pieces of informa-
     tion, each terminated by NUL: user; uid; gid; homedir; dash;
     and  ext.   The  user's account name is user; the user's uid
     and gid in decimal are uid and gid; the user's  home  direc-
     tory  is  homedir;  and messages to local will be handled by
     homedir/.qmaildashext.

     In case of trouble, qmail-getpw exits nonzero without print-
     ing anything.

     WARNING:  The operating system's getpwnam function, which is
     at the heart of qmail-getpw, is inherently unreliable.

RULES
     qmail-getpw considers an account in /etc/passwd to be a user
     if (1) the account has a nonzero uid, (2) the account's home
     directory exists (and is visible to  qmail-getpw),  and  (3)
     the  account  owns  its home directory.  qmail-getpw ignores
     account names containing uppercase letters.

     qmail-getpw gives each user  control  over  the  basic  user
     address  and  all addresses of the form user-anything.  When
     local is user, dash and ext are both empty.  When  local  is
     user-anything,  dash  is a hyphen and ext is anything.  user
     may appear in any combination  of  uppercase  and  lowercase
     letters at the front of local.

     A  catch-all  user, alias, controls all other addresses.  In
     this case ext is local and dash is a hyphen.

     You can override all of  qmail-getpw's  decisions  with  the
     qmail-users  mechanism,  which  is  reliable, highly config-
     urable, and much faster than qmail-getpw.

SEE ALSO
     qmail-users(5), qmail-lspawn(8)










SunOS 5.5                 Last change:                          1