SYNOPSIS

       qmail-getpw local

DESCRIPTION

       In s/qmail, each	user controls a	vast array of local addresses.	qmail-
       getpw finds the user that controls a  particular	 address,  local.   It
       prints  six  pieces  of information, 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	direc-
       tory is homedir;	and  messages  to  local  will	be  handled  by	 home-
       dir/.qmaildashext.

       In  case	 of  trouble,  qmail-getpw exits nonzero without printing any-
       thing.

       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 nonexistent	 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	direc-
       tory.   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  low-
       ercase 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 configurable, and much faster than
       qmail-getpw.

SEE ALSO

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



				       8		 s/qmail:(qmail-getpw)