PMDF normally looks for your .forward file in your home directory. However, your PMDF system manager may have chosen to configure PMDF to look in a different location for user .forward files; check with your PMDF system manager if you have any question about where your .forward file should reside.

The format for a .forward file is one or more lines, each line containing one or more comma-separated recipient entries. A recipient entry may take the following forms.

• user@domain directs a copy of the message to the specified address.
• \your-account-name delivers a copy to you "normally" (in addition to any other forwarding specified by other entries).
• /directory/path/filename appends a copy of the message to the specified file. (The specified file must be writeable by you.)
• +/directory/path/filename appends a copy of the message to the specified file using digest-like boundary markers between the messages. (The specified file must be writeable by you.)
• |command where command is a shell command will execute that command as you, with your access and privileges, with standard input coming from the message being delivered.
• |command args where command args is a shell command with arguments will execute that command as you, with your access and privileges, with standard input coming from the message being delivered.

Lines beginning with an exclamation point character, !, are considered to be comment lines.

Note that when executing certain actions of your .forward file, PMDF becomes you. In particular, any scripts executed by your .forward file will be executed as you, with your access and privileges.

Example 2-1 shows a sample .forward file for a user jdoe who wants one copy of his messages delivered normally, one copy sent to another of his accounts, one copy sent to his pager, one copy filed in the file thismonthsmailarchive, and also wants to pipe the message through the procmail utility.

Example 2-1 Sample .forward file for user John.Doe

\jdoe, John.Doe@system2.example.com, John.Doe@pager.example.com /usr/users/jdoe/thismonthsmailarchive "|/usr/bin/procmail jdoe"

2.2 The PMDF User Profile Database

To see what options, if any, your system manager has configured for your site, issue the command

% pmdf profile show method -all

If your system manager has configured any options, they will be listed in the output. For instance, if your system manager has configured two options, regular BSD mailbox delivery and delivery to a MailWorks mailbox, you might see output such as:

% pmdf profile show method -all Method BSD is defined as: /var/spool/mail/%s Method DMW is defined as: |/usr/bin/inetgrecv %s

To see what your own delivery method is set to, if it is set at all, issue the command

% pmdf profile show delivery

To set your delivery method, issue the command

% pmdf profile set delivery method-name

where method-name is the name of a method defined by the system manager, listed in the output of a pmdf profile show method -all command. For instance,

% pmdf profile profile> show method -all Method BSD is defined as: /var/spool/mail/%s Method DMW is defined as: |/usr/bin/inetgrecv %s profile> set delivery DMW profile> exit

See Section 5.2 for additional discussion of using the pmdf profile utility.