smtpfwdd(8)

smtpfwdd8

Smtp message forwarding daemon.

Usage

smtpfwdd [-d spooldir] [-u user] [-g group] [-s mailprog] [-M maxchildren] [-P poll time]

Overview

The smtpfwdd daemon forwards mail messages from a spool directory to their eventual destinations. It regularly scans the spool directory in which its symboitic companion program smtpd stores messages and invokes a mail program (such as sendmail) to forward them. It is the forward portion of an SMTP store and foward proxy. smtpfwdd is a standalone daemon, usually invoked at system startup.

Options

-d spooldir

Specify a different spool directory. This should be the same directoy in which smtpd is spooling files. (usually /usr/spool/smtpd)

-u user

Specify a user to run as. This user must not be root but should normally be a user that is able to run sendmail and use the -f option to specify the sender of a mail message.

-g group

Specify a group to run as. Same as <tt>user</tt> above.

-s mailprog

Specify a different mail program to use to forward mail. The default is sendmail. Any replacement must be able to be invoked in the same manner as sendmail with a <tt>-f fromaddress</tt>, followed by one or more destination addresses on the command line.

-M maxchildren

specifies how many children smtpfwdd should be allowed to spawn at once when delivering mail. Default is specified at compile time, usually 10.

-P polltime

specifies in seconds how often the master smtpfwdd process should wake up and check the spool directory for new mail to forward. The default is specified at compile time, usually 10 seconds.

Notes

smtpd and smtpfwdd are also available separately from Juniper under quite friendly copyright terms. It can be obtained using anonymous ftp in the directory ftp://ftp.obtuse.com/pub/smtpd

Licence

All rights reserved Use of the Juniper software is covered by the terms and conditions of the Juniper License Agreement. If you do not agree to and accept the terms of this agreement then you may not use the software.

Releases

Unchanged in 4 releases since Debian 2.2 (Potato).

  1. 2.2–4.0

Bugs

Since sendmail is not normally running as a daemon when using smtpd and smtpfwdd, one must use cron to periodically invoke sendmail -q so that queued messages are retried for eventual delivery.

There are many different variations of sendmail. smtpfwdd will check and pay attention to the exit status of the sendmail processes it invokes, possibly retrying an invocation of sendmail. If you aren't using real unadulterated Berkeley sendmail of a recent vintage, you may need to disable the exit status checking at compile time (See option
SENDMAIL_RETRY in the makefile).

sendmail can't handle a . on one line in a message body. This problem is bypassed in smtpfwdd by giving sendmail the option -oitrue. Again, if you aren't using genuine sendmail, you may need to disable this at compile time (see option SENDMAIL_OITRUE in the makefile).

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Author

Obtuse Systems Corporation

From smtpd 2.0-8.1 in Debian 4.0 (Etch). Parsed by carta from the page's man source.