2.2.7 Mailer Statement

Syntax

mailer {
  url url;
}

Description

A mailer is a special logical entity GNU Mailutils uses for sending messages. Its internal representation is discussed in Mailer (Editor’s note: dangling link). The mailer statement configures it.

The mailer statement contains a single sub-statement:

Configuration: url str

Set the mailer URL.

GNU Mailutils supports two types of mailer URLs, described in the table below. As usual, square brackets indicate optional parts:

smtp://host[:port]

Use an SMTP server host to send messages. Optional port specifies port number or symbolic name (as defined in /etc/services). It defaults to 25. The host can be specified as either an IP address in dotted-quad notation or as a symbolic host name. In the latter case, DNS system will be used to resolve it.

sendmail://progname

Use sendmail-compatible program progname. Sendmail-compatible means that the program must support following command line options:

-oi

Do not treat ‘.’ as message terminator.

-f addr

Use addr as the sender address.

-t

Get recipient addresses from the message.

sendmail:

This is a special form of the ‘sendmail’ mailer. It uses the sendmail binary from the _PATH_SENDMAIL macro in your /usr/include/paths.h. It is the default mailer.

prog://progname?query

A prog mailer. This is a generalization of ‘sendmail’ mailer that allows to use arbitrary external programs as mailers.

The progname must be a full pathname of the binary file. When sending message, Mailutils will invoke this file with the arguments specified by query and will pipe the message to be sent to its standard input.

The query part is a list of arguments, separated by ‘&’ signs. Arguments may contain the following macro-substitutions:

‘${sender}’

Expands to the sender email address.

‘${rcpt}’

Expands to the recipient email addresses.