vacation

VACATION(1)               BSD General Commands Manual              VACATION(1)

NAME
     vacation -- return "I am not here" indication

SYNOPSIS
     vacation -i [-r interval]
     vacation -l
     vacation -x
     vacation [-a alias] [-c ccaddr] [-d] [-f db] [-m msg] [-j] [-z] login

DESCRIPTION
     vacation returns a message to the sender of a message telling them that
     you are currently not reading your mail.  The intended use is in a
     .forward file.  For example, your .forward file might have:

           \eric, "|/usr/bin/vacation -a allman eric"

     which would send messages to you (assuming your login name was eric) and
     reply to any messages for "eric" or "allman".

     Available options:

     -a alias
             Handle messages for alias in the same manner as those received
             for the user's login name. Using -a alias multiple times is pos-
             sible.

     -c ccaddr
             Copy the vacation messages to ccaddr.

     -d      Print messages to stderr instead of syslog.

     -f db   Uses db as the database file.

     -m msg  Uses msg as the message file.

     -j      Reply to the message even if our address cannot be found in the
             "To:" or "Cc:" headers.  This option is very dangerous and should
             be used with extreme care.

     -z      Set the envelope sender of the reply message to "<>".

     -i      Initialize the vacation database files.  It should be used before
             you modify your .forward file.

     -r      Set the reply interval to interval days.  The default is one
             week.  An interval of "0" means that a reply is sent to each mes-
             sage, and an interval of "infinite" (actually, any non-numeric
             character) will never send more than one reply.  It should be
             noted that intervals of "0" are quite dangerous, as it allows
             mailers to get into "I am on vacation" loops.

     -x      Reads a list of addresses from standard input, one per line, and
             adds them to the vacation database.  Mail coming from these ex-
             cluded addresses will not get a reply.  Whole domains can be ex-
             cluded using the syntax "@domain".

     -l      Print the contents of the vacation database files.  For each en-
             try, the address the reply has been sent to and the associated
             time will be printed to standard output.

     When started without arguments, vacation will guide the user through the
     configuration process.

     No message will be sent unless login (or an alias supplied using the -a
     option) is part of either the "To:" or "Cc:" headers of the mail.  No
     messages from "???-REQUEST", "Postmaster", "UUCP", "MAILER", or
     "MAILER-DAEMON" will be replied to (where these strings are case insensi-
     tive) nor is a notification sent if a "Precedence: bulk", "Precedence:
     list", "Precedence: junk", "X-Spam-Flag: yes" or "Auto-submitted:
     (something other than no)" line is included in the mail headers.  The
     people who have sent you messages are maintained as a db(3) database in
     the file .vacation.db in your home directory.

     vacation expects a file .vacation.msg, in your home directory, containing
     a message to be sent back to each sender.  It should be an entire message
     (including headers).  For example, it might contain:

           From: eric@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman)
           Subject: I am on vacation
           Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: The Vacation program
           Precedence: bulk

           I am on vacation until July 22.  If you have something urgent,
           please contact Keith Bostic <bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU>.
           --eric

     Any occurrence of the string $SUBJECT in .vacation.msg will be replaced
     by the subject of the message that triggered the vacation program.

     vacation reads the incoming message from standard input, checking the
     message headers for either the UNIX "From" line or a "Return-Path" header
     to determine the sender.  If both are present the sender from the
     "Return-Path" header is used.  Sendmail(8) includes this "From" line au-
     tomatically.

     Fatal errors, such as calling vacation with incorrect arguments, or with
     non-existent logins, are logged on the standard error output and in the
     system log file, using syslog(3).

DIAGNOSTICS
     The vacation utility exits 0 on success, and >0 if an error occurs.

FILES
     ~/.vacation.db   database file
     ~/.vacation.msg  message to send
     ~/.forward

SEE ALSO
     aliases(5), sendmail(8), syslogd(8)

HISTORY
     The vacation command appeared in 4.3BSD.

AUTHOR
     vacation was developed by Eric Allman and the University of California,
     Berkeley in 1983.
     This version is maintained by Marco d'Itri <md@linux.it> and contains
     code taken from the three free BSD and some patches applied to a linux
     port.

Linux                            June 15, 2003                           Linux