    POSTALIAS(1)                                                      POSTALIAS(1)

    NAME
           postalias - Postfix alias database maintenance

    SYNOPSIS
           postalias [-Nfijnoprsuvw] [-c config_dir] [-d key] [-q key]
                   [file_type:]file_name ...

    DESCRIPTION
           The  postalias(1)  command creates or queries one or more Postfix alias
           databases, or updates an existing one. The input and output  file  for-
           mats  are  expected  to  be compatible with Sendmail version 8, and are
           expected to be suitable for use as NIS alias maps.

           If the result files do not exist they will be  created  with  the  same
           group and other read permissions as their source file.

           While  a  database update is in progress, signal delivery is postponed,
           and an exclusive, advisory, lock is placed on the entire  database,  in
           order to avoid surprises in spectator processes.

           The format of Postfix alias input files is described in aliases(5).

           By  default  the  lookup key is mapped to lowercase to make the lookups
           case insensitive; as of Postfix 2.3 this case folding happens only with
           tables whose lookup keys are fixed-case strings such as btree:, dbm: or
           hash:. With earlier versions, the lookup key is folded even with tables
           where  a lookup field can match both upper and lower case text, such as
           regexp: and pcre:. This resulted in loss of  information  with  $number
           substitutions.

           Options:

           -c config_dir
                  Read  the  main.cf  configuration  file  in  the named directory
                  instead of the default configuration directory.

           -d key Search the specified maps for key and remove one entry per  map.
                  The  exit  status  is  zero  when  the requested information was
                  found.

                  If a key value of - is specified, the program reads  key  values
                  from  the standard input stream. The exit status is zero when at
                  least one of the requested keys was found.

           -f     Do not fold the lookup key  to  lower  case  while  creating  or
                  querying a table.

                  With  Postfix  version  2.3 and later, this option has no effect
                  for regular expression tables. There, case folding is controlled
                  by appending a flag to a pattern.

           -i     Incremental  mode.  Read  entries from standard input and do not
                  truncate an existing database. By default, postalias(1)  creates
                  a new database from the entries in file_name.

           -j     JSON  output.  Format  the  output from -q and -s as one {"key":
                  "value"} object per line.

                  This feature is available in Postfix version 3.11 and later.

           -N     Include the terminating null character  that  terminates  lookup
                  keys  and  values. By default, postalias(1) does whatever is the
                  default for the host operating system.

           -n     Don't include the terminating  null  character  that  terminates
                  lookup  keys  and values. By default, postalias(1) does whatever
                  is the default for the host operating system.

           -o     Do not release root privileges when processing a non-root  input
                  file. By default, postalias(1) drops root privileges and runs as
                  the source file owner instead.

           -p     Do not inherit the file access permissions from the  input  file
                  when  creating  a  new  file.   Instead,  create a new file with
                  default access permissions (mode 0644).

           -q key Search the specified maps for key  and  write  the  first  value
                  found  to  the  standard  output stream. The exit status is zero
                  when the requested information was found.

                  Note: this performs a single query with the  key  as  specified,
                  and  does  not make iterative queries with substrings of the key
                  as described in the aliases(5) manual page.

                  If a key value of - is specified, the program reads  key  values
                  from the standard input stream and writes one line of key: value
                  output for each key that was found. The exit status is zero when
                  at least one of the requested keys was found.

           -r     When  updating a table, do not complain about attempts to update
                  existing entries, and make those updates anyway.

           -s     Retrieve all database elements, and write one line of key: value
                  output  for  each  element. The elements are printed in database
                  order, which is not necessarily the same as the  original  input
                  order.   This  feature  is  available in Postfix version 2.2 and
                  later, and is not available for all database types.

           -u     Disable UTF-8 support. UTF-8 support is enabled by default  when
                  "smtputf8_enable  =  yes".  It requires that keys and values are
                  valid UTF-8 strings.

           -v     Enable verbose  logging  for  debugging  purposes.  Multiple  -v
                  options make the software increasingly verbose.

           -w     When  updating a table, do not complain about attempts to update
                  existing entries, and ignore those attempts.

           Arguments:

           file_type
                  The database type. To find out what types are supported, use the
                  "postconf -m" command.

                  When  no  file_type is specified, the software uses the database
                  type  specified  via  the  default_database_type   configuration
                  parameter.   The default value for this parameter depends on the
                  host environment.

                  The postalias(1) command can query any supported file type,  but
                  it can create only the following file types:

                  btree  The  output is a btree file, named file_name.db.  This is
                         available on systems with support for db databases.

                  cdb    The output is one  file  named  file_name.cdb.   This  is
                         available on systems with support for cdb databases.

                  dbm    The output consists of two files, named file_name.pag and
                         file_name.dir.  This is available on systems with support
                         for dbm databases.

                  fail   A  table that reliably fails all requests. The lookup ta-
                         ble name is used for logging only. This table  exists  to
                         simplify Postfix error tests.

                  hash   The output is a hashed file, named file_name.db.  This is
                         available on systems with support for db databases.

                  lmdb   The output is a btree-based file,  named  file_name.lmdb.
                         lmdb  supports concurrent writes and reads from different
                         processes,  unlike  other  supported  file-based  tables.
                         This  is available on systems with support for lmdb data-
                         bases.

                  sdbm   The output consists of two files, named file_name.pag and
                         file_name.dir.  This is available on systems with support
                         for sdbm databases.

           file_name
                  The name of the alias database source file when creating a data-
                  base.

    DIAGNOSTICS
           Problems  are  logged to the standard error stream and to syslogd(8) or
           postlogd(8). No output means that no problems were detected.  Duplicate
           entries are skipped and are flagged with a warning.

           postalias(1)  terminates  with  zero  exit  status  in  case of success
           (including  successful  "postalias  -q"  lookup)  and  terminates  with
           non-zero exit status in case of failure.

    ENVIRONMENT
           MAIL_CONFIG
                  Directory with Postfix configuration files.

           MAIL_VERBOSE
                  Enable verbose logging for debugging purposes.

    CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS
           The  following  main.cf parameters are especially relevant to this pro-
           gram.

           The text below provides only a parameter summary. See  postconf(5)  for
           more details including examples.

           alias_database (see 'postconf -d' output)
                  The  alias databases for local(8) delivery that are updated with
                  "newaliases" or with "sendmail -bi".

           config_directory (see 'postconf -d' output)
                  The default location of the Postfix main.cf and  master.cf  con-
                  figuration files.

           berkeley_db_create_buffer_size (16777216)
                  The  per-table I/O buffer size for programs that create Berkeley
                  DB hash or btree tables.

           berkeley_db_read_buffer_size (131072)
                  The per-table I/O buffer size for programs that read Berkeley DB
                  hash or btree tables.

           default_database_type (see 'postconf -d' output)
                  The default database type for use in newaliases(1), postalias(1)
                  and postmap(1) commands.

           import_environment (see 'postconf -d' output)
                  The list of environment  variables  that  a  privileged  Postfix
                  process  will  import  from  a  non-Postfix  parent  process, or
                  name=value environment overrides.

           smtputf8_enable (yes)
                  Enable preliminary SMTPUTF8 support for the protocols  described
                  in RFC 6531, RFC 6532, and RFC 6533.

           syslog_facility (mail)
                  The syslog facility of Postfix logging.

           syslog_name (see 'postconf -d' output)
                  A  prefix  that  is  prepended  to  the  process  name in syslog
                  records, so that, for example, "smtpd" becomes "prefix/smtpd".

           Available in Postfix 2.11 and later:

           lmdb_map_size (16777216)
                  The initial OpenLDAP LMDB database size limit in bytes.

    STANDARDS
           RFC 822 (ARPA Internet Text Messages)

    SEE ALSO
           aliases(5), format of alias database input file.
           local(8), Postfix local delivery agent.
           postconf(1), supported database types
           postconf(5), configuration parameters
           postmap(1), create/update/query lookup tables
           newaliases(1), Sendmail compatibility interface.
           postlogd(8), Postfix logging
           syslogd(8), system logging

    README FILES
           DATABASE_README, Postfix lookup table overview

    LICENSE
           The Secure Mailer license must be distributed with this software.

    AUTHOR(S)
           Wietse Venema
           IBM T.J. Watson Research
           P.O. Box 704
           Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA

           Wietse Venema
           Google, Inc.
           111 8th Avenue
           New York, NY 10011, USA

                                                                      POSTALIAS(1)