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FORWARD(5)               DragonFly File Formats Manual              FORWARD(5)

NAME
     forward - mail forwarding instructions

DESCRIPTION
     The .forward file contains a list of mail addresses or programs that the
     user's mail should be redirected to.

     If the file is not present, then no mail forwarding will be done.
     Additionally, the manual page of the currently installed MTA should be
     consulted about the MTA's mail forwarding support.

     Mail may also be forwarded as the standard input to a program by
     prefixing the line with the normal shell pipe symbol (|).  If arguments
     are to be passed to the command, then the entire line should be enclosed
     in quotes.  For security reasons, the .forward file must be owned by the
     user the mail is being sent to, or by root, and the user's shell must be
     listed in /etc/shells.

     For example, if a .forward file contained the following lines:

           nobody@FreeBSD.org
           "|/usr/bin/vacation nobody"

     Mail would be forwarded to nobody@FreeBSD.org and to the program
     /usr/bin/vacation with the single argument nobody.

     If a local user address is prefixed with a backslash character, mail is
     delivered directly to the user's mail spool file, bypassing further
     redirection.

     For example, if user chris had a .forward file containing the following
     lines:

           chris@otherhost
           \chris

     One copy of mail would be forwarded to chris@otherhost and another copy
     would be retained as mail for local user chris.

FILES
     $HOME/.forward  The user's forwarding instructions.

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

DragonFly 6.3-DEVELOPMENT      January 17, 2023      DragonFly 6.3-DEVELOPMENT