qmail-autoresponder(1)qmail-autoresponder(1)NAMEqmail-autoresponder - Produce automatic responses with qmail
SYNOPSISqmail-autoresponder [ -cLNqT ] [ -O NAME[=VALUE] ] [ -n NUM ] [ -s STR
] [ -t TIME ] [ MESSAGE-FILE ] DIRECTORY
DESCRIPTIONqmail-autoresponder sends an automatically-generated message in
response to an incoming message. By default, it limits the number of
responses it sends to a maximum of one message per hour per sender. It
will not respond to any known mailing list, nor will it respond to
either bounces or loops.
The MESSAGE-FILE is used as the response message, and must contain a
complete mail message including From: and Subject: headers. If the
MESSAGE-FILE argument is not present, it defaults to message.txt. All
occurrences of %S in the message file are replaced with the original
message's subject. To put a percent sign in the message, write it as
%%.
qmail-autoresponder limits the rate at which it sends responses to each
recipient to prevent mail flooding or denial-of-service attacks. For
each response it sends, it creates a file in DIRECTORY. The name of
that file consists of the process ID of qmail-autoresponder, a period,
the current UNIX time number, and the envelope sender address (with any
/ characters replaced with : to prevent creation of files outside of
DIRECTORY). When it receives a message, it scans DIRECTORY. Any files
that are older than the time interval (see below) are deleted and
ignored. If the number of remaining files with the same sender address
is greater than or equal to the maximum number of replies, no response
is generated.
OPTIONSqmail-autoresponder supports options specified on the command line and
as files in the DIRECTORY named on the command line. Option files in
the directory override options set on the command line.
COMMAND LINE
-c Equivalent to -O copymsg=1
-L Create new files (instead of making links) for each recipient
file. This uses more inodes, but may be required for filesys‐
tems (such as Coda) that don't handle links properly.
-N Write the generated response to standard output instead of send‐
ing it.
-n NUM Equivalent to -O msglimit=NUM
-O NAME[=VALUE]
Sets named option NAME to VALUE. If VALUE is omitted, a value
of 1 is used. See below for all the named options.
-q Quiet. Don't show error messages.
-s STR Equivalent to -O subject_prefix=STR
-T Do not add a To: <SENDER> line to the response.
-t TIME
Equivalent to -O timelimit=TIME
NAMED OPTIONS
copymsg (boolean)
Copy the original message into the response.
headerkeep (string)
If this option is given, only the headers listed in the value
are copied from the message into the response. Separate header
names with a colon. If neither this nor headerstrip are used,
all headers are copied.
headerstrip (string)
If this option is given and headerkeep is not, the headers
listed in the value are omitted when copying from the message
into the response. Separate header names with a colon. Header
names are treated as patterns, and so may contain * to match any
string. For example, the pattern x-* will match the headers X-
DomainKeys: and X-SpamLevel:.
msglimit (integer)
Set the maximum number of replies per timelimit (defaults to 1).
no_inreplyto (boolean)
Do not add an In-Reply-To: header to the outgoing message. Nor‐
mally, if a Message-Id: header is found in the original message,
qmail-autoresponder will add the contents of that header to the
outgoing message. This allows some email programs to group
responses more intelligently.
numlines (integer)
Limits the maximum number of lines copied from the original mes‐
sage body into the response. This option is only relevant if
the copymsg option is also used. If not given, all the lines in
the original message body are copied. This limit does not
impact how many lines of the header are copied.
subject_prefix (string)
Add a subject line to the response message composed of the pre‐
fix STR followed by the original subject. This can also be
accomplished by putting the following line at the start of the
message file:
Subject: STR %S
timelimit (integer)
Set the interval during which responses are counted (in seconds)
(defaults to 1 hour).
RETURN VALUE
Exits zero if there were no problems, otherwise exits 111.
ENVIRONMENT
DTLINE qmail-autoresponder searches for this line (generated by qmail-
local) in the input and bounces the message if it is present
(which indicates a mail loop). It then adds the line to the
output.
SENDER This contains the envelope sender address and is used as the
address to send the reply to.
qmail-autoresponder(1)
