NAME vacation - return ``I am not here'' indicationCheck out the Unix Man pages ManualsSYNOPSIS vacation -i [-r interval] vacation [-a alias] 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.
-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 message, and an interval of ``infinite'' (actually, any non-nu- meric character) will never send more than one reply. It should be noted that intervals of ``0'' are quite dangerous, as it al- lows mailers to get into ``I am on vacation'' loops.
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 insen- sitive) nor is a notification sent if a ``Precedence: bulk'' or ``Precedence: junk'' line is included in the mail headers. The people who have sent you messages are maintained as a dbopen(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: [email protected] (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 <[email protected]>. --eric
Vacation reads the first line from the standard input for a UNIX ``From'' line to determine the sender. Sendmail(8) includes this ``From'' line automatically.
Fatal errors, such as calling vacation with incorrect arguments, or with non-existent logins, are logged in the system log file, using syslog(8).
FILES
~/.vacation.db database file ~/.vacation.msg message to send
SEE ALSO sendmail(8), syslog(8)
HISTORY The vacation command appeared in 4.3BSD.