mail.local(8) on freebsd

Usage

mail.local [-7] [-B] [-b] [-d] [-D mbdb] [-l] [-s] [{-f from | -r from}] [-h filename] user ...

Overview

Mail.local reads the standard input up to an end-of-file and appends it to each user's mail file. The user must be a valid user name.

The options are as follows:

-7: Do not advertise 8BITMIME support in LMTP mode.

-B: Turn off the attempts to notify the ``biff'' service.

-b: Return a permanent error instead of a temporary error if a mailbox exceeds quota.

-d: Specify this is a delivery (for backward compatibility). This option has no effect.

-D mbdb: Specify the name of the mailbox database which is used to look up local recipient names. This option defaults to "pw", which means use getpwnam().

-f from: Specify the sender's name.

-l: Turn on LMTP mode.

-s: Turn off the fsync(2) call that forces the mailbox to be committed to disk before returning a "success" status.

-r from: Specify the sender's name (for backward compatibility). Same as -f.

-h filename: Store incoming mail in filename in the user's home directory instead of a system mail spool directory.

The next options are only available if mail.local has been compiled with -DHASHSPOOL.

-H hashtypehashdepth: Select hashed mail directories. Valid hash types are u for user name and m for MD5 (requires compilation with -DHASHSPOOLMD5). Example: -H u2 selects user name hashing with a hash depth of 2. Note: there must be no space between the hash type and the depth.

-p path: Specify an alternate mail spool path.

-n: Specify that the domain part of recipient addresses in LMTP mode should not be stripped.

Individual mail messages in the mailbox are delimited by an empty line followed by a line beginning with the string ``From ''. A line containing the string ``From '', the sender's name and a time stamp is prepended to each delivered mail message. A blank line is appended to each message. A greater-than character (``>'') is prepended to any line in the message which could be mistaken for a ``From '' delimiter line (that is, a line beginning with the five characters ``From '' following a blank line).

The mail files are exclusively locked with flock(2) while mail is appended, and a user.lock file also is created while the mailbox is locked for compatibility with older MUAs.

If the ``biff'' service is returned by getservbyname(3), the biff server is notified of delivered mail.

The mail.local utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

Environment

TZ: Used to set the appropriate time zone on the timestamp.

Files

/tmp/local.XXXXXX: temporary files

/var/mail/user: user's default mailbox directory

/var/mail/user.lock: lock file for a user's default mailbox

Warning

mail.local escapes only "^From " lines that follow an empty line. If all lines starting with "From " should be escaped, use the 'E' flag for the local mailer in the sendmail.cf file.

History

FreeBSD 16.0-CURRENT (2026-10-27) to FreeBSD 13.0-RELEASE: the text shown here
FreeBSD 12.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 12.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 12.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 12.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 12.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 11.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 11.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 11.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 11.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 10.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 10.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 10.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 10.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 10.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 9.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 9.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 9.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 8.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 8.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 7.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 6.4-RELEASE
FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE to FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 5.2.1-RELEASE to FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.11-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.10-RELEASE to FreeBSD 4.7-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.6.2-RELEASE to FreeBSD 4.6-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.5-RELEASE to FreeBSD 4.3-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.1.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 4.1-RELEASE to FreeBSD 3.1-RELEASE
FreeBSD 3.0-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.9-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.8-RELEASE to FreeBSD 2.2.6-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.2.5-RELEASE to FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE
FreeBSD 2.1.7.1-RELEASE to FreeBSD 2.0.5-RELEASE

-7 since FreeBSD 4.1.1-RELEASE; -B since FreeBSD 4.1.1-RELEASE; -b since FreeBSD 2.2.2-RELEASE; -d since FreeBSD 4.1.1-RELEASE; -l since FreeBSD 4.1.1-RELEASE; -n since FreeBSD 5.3-RELEASE; -s since FreeBSD 3.0-RELEASE.

-f until FreeBSD 4.1-RELEASE.