MAN PAGES FOR QMAIL 1.03

NAME

     qmail-getpw - give addresses to users

SYNOPSIS

     qmail-getpw local

DESCRIPTION

     In  qmail,  each  user  controls  a  vast  array  of   local
     addresses.   qmail-getpw finds the user that controls a par-
     ticular address, local.  It prints six  pieces  of  informa-
     tion,  each  terminated  by  NUL:   user; uid; gid; homedir;
     dash; and ext.  The user's account name is user; the  user's
     uid  and  gid  in  decimal  are uid and gid; the user's home
     directory is homedir; and messages to local will be  handled
     by homedir/.qmaildashext.

     In case of trouble, qmail-getpw exits nonzero without print-
     ing anything.

     WARNING: The operating system's getpwnam function, which  is
     at  the  heart of qmail-getpw, is inherently unreliable:  it
     fails to distinguish between  temporary  errors  and  nonex-
     istent  users.   Future  versions  of getpwnam should return
     ETXTBSY to indicate temporary errors and ESRCH  to  indicate
     nonexistent users.

RULES

     qmail-getpw considers an account in /etc/passwd to be a user
     if (1) the account has a nonzero uid, (2) the account's home
     directory exists (and is visible to  qmail-getpw),  and  (3)
     the  account  owns  its home directory.  qmail-getpw ignores
     account names  containing  uppercase  letters.   qmail-getpw
     also  assumes  that  all  account  names are shorter than 32
     characters.

     qmail-getpw gives each user  control  over  the  basic  user
     address  and  all addresses of the form user-anything.  When
     local is user, dash and ext are both empty.  When  local  is
     user-anything,  dash  is a hyphen and ext is anything.  user
     may appear in any combination  of  uppercase  and  lowercase
     letters at the front of local.

     A catch-all user, alias, controls all other  addresses.   In
     this case ext is local and dash is a hyphen.

     You can override all of  qmail-getpw's  decisions  with  the
     qmail-users  mechanism,  which is reliable, highly configur-
     able, and much faster than qmail-getpw.

SEE ALSO

     qmail-users(5), qmail-lspawn(8)