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qmail-getpw.9 (2126B)

      1 .TH qmail-getpw 8
      2 .SH NAME
      3 qmail-getpw \- give addresses to users
      4 .SH SYNOPSIS
      5 .B qmail-getpw
      6 .I local
      7 .SH DESCRIPTION
      8 In
      9 .BR qmail ,
     10 each user controls a vast array of local addresses.
     11 .B qmail-getpw
     12 finds the user that controls a particular address,
     13 .IR local .
     14 It prints six pieces of information,
     15 each terminated by NUL:
     16 .IR user ;
     17 .IR uid ;
     18 .IR gid ;
     19 .IR homedir ;
     20 .IR dash ;
     21 and
     22 .IR ext .
     23 The user's account name is
     24 .IR user ;
     25 the user's uid and gid in decimal are
     26 .I uid
     27 and
     28 .IR gid ;
     29 the user's home directory is
     30 .IR homedir ;
     31 and messages to
     32 .I local
     33 will be handled by
     34 .IR homedir\fB/.qmail\fIdashext .
     35 
     36 In case of trouble,
     37 .B qmail-getpw
     38 exits nonzero without printing anything.
     39 
     40 .B WARNING:
     41 The operating system's
     42 .B getpwnam
     43 function, which is at the heart of
     44 .BR qmail-getpw ,
     45 is inherently unreliable:
     46 it fails to distinguish between temporary errors and nonexistent users.
     47 Future versions of
     48 .B getpwnam
     49 should return ETXTBSY to indicate temporary errors
     50 and ESRCH to indicate nonexistent users.
     51 .SH "RULES"
     52 .B qmail-getpw
     53 considers an account in
     54 .B /etc/passwd
     55 to be a user if
     56 (1) the account has a nonzero uid,
     57 (2) the account's home directory exists (and is visible to
     58 .BR qmail-getpw ),
     59 and
     60 (3) the account owns its home directory.
     61 .B qmail-getpw
     62 ignores account names containing uppercase letters.
     63 .B qmail-getpw
     64 also assumes that all account names are shorter than 32 characters.
     65 
     66 .B qmail-getpw
     67 gives each user
     68 control over the basic
     69 .I user
     70 address and
     71 all addresses of the form
     72 .IR user\fBBREAK\fIanything .
     73 When
     74 .I local
     75 is
     76 .IR user ,
     77 .I dash
     78 and
     79 .I ext
     80 are both empty.
     81 When
     82 .I local
     83 is
     84 .IR user\fBBREAK\fIanything ,
     85 .I dash
     86 is a hyphen and
     87 .I ext
     88 is
     89 .IR anything .
     90 .I user
     91 may appear in any combination of uppercase and lowercase letters
     92 at the front of
     93 .IR local .
     94 
     95 A catch-all user,
     96 .BR alias ,
     97 controls all other addresses.
     98 In this case
     99 .I ext
    100 is
    101 .I local
    102 and
    103 .I dash
    104 is a hyphen.
    105 
    106 You can override all of
    107 .BR qmail-getpw 's
    108 decisions with the
    109 .B qmail-users
    110 mechanism, which is reliable, highly configurable, and much faster than
    111 .BR qmail-getpw .
    112 .SH "SEE ALSO"
    113 qmail-users(5),
    114 qmail-lspawn(8)