mailbot reads an E-mail message on standard input and creates an E-mail message replying to the original message's sender. A program is specified as an argument to mailbot after all of mailbot options. program is expected to read the created autoreply on its standard input, and mail it. If program is not specified, mailbot runs 'sendmail -f ""'.
mailbot has several options for suppressing duplicate autoresponse messages. If mailbot chooses not to send an autoresponse, it quietly terminates without running program. The autoresponse is optionally formatted as a MIME delivery status notification.
The text of the autoresponse is specified by the -t
or
the -m
argument. Either one is required.
Everything else is optional.
The default behavior is to send an autoresponse unless the original message
has the "Precedence: junk" or the
"Precedence: bulk" header, or if
it's MIME content type is "multipart/report"
(this is the MIME content type for delivery status notifications).
The -M
option formats the
the autoresponse itself as a MIME delivery status notification.
Address the autoresponse to address, which must
be an
RFC 2822
address.
By default mailbot takes the autoresponse
address from the
From: (or the Reply-To:) header
in the original message.
-f
, if present, overrides and explicitly sets the
autoresponse address.
"address" must immediately follow the
-f
option without an intervening space
(it's a single command line argument).
An -f
option without an address
takes the address from the SENDER
environment variable.
Read text autoresponse from filename, which should contain a plain text message.
Set the autoresponse's MIME character set to charset. Run mailbot without any arguments to see the default character set.
Read a MIME autoresponse from filename.
This is similar to the -t
option,
except that filename contains MIME headers,
followed by a blank line, and the corresponding
MIME content. The contents of filename are
inserted in the autoresponse without further processing.
Format the autoresponse as a delivery status
notification
(RFC 1894).
address is an
RFC 2822
E-mail address that generates the DSN.
Note that the -A
option should be used in
ddition to -M
in order to set the
From: header on the autoresponse.
addrlist is a comma-separated list of RFC 2822 E-mail addresses. mailbot sends an autoresponse only if the original message has at least one of the specified addresses in any To: or Cc: header.
Create a small database, filename,
that keeps track of sender's E-mail addresses,
and prevent duplicate autoresponses going to the same address
(suppress autoresponses going back to the same senders, for subsequent
received messages).
The -d
option is only available if
maildrop has GDBM/DB extensions enabled.
Do not send duplicate autoresponses (see the
-d
option) for at least
x days (default: 1 day). The
-d
option creates a database of E-mail addresses and
the times an
autoresponse was last mailed to them. Another autoresponse to the same
address will not be mailed until at least the amount of time specified by
the -D
option has elapsed.
Set the Subject: header on the autoresponse to subject.
Add an arbitrary header to the
autoresponse. Multiple -A
options are allowed.