sendmail, 4th Edition

The Syntax of -d

The form for the -d command-line switch is:

-dcategory.level,category.level,....
-dANSI                                         ← V8.8 and above
-dexpression.level,expression.level,....       ← V8.12 and above

The -d can appear alone, or it can be followed by one or more category.level pairs separated by commas or, beginning with V8.8, by the word ANSI. We cover the category.level pairs first, then ANSI, and finally the expression form.

The category limits debugging to an aspect of sendmail (such as queuing or aliasing). The level limits the verbosity of sendmail (with low levels producing the least output).

The category is either a positive integer or a range of integer values specified as:

first-last

When category is a range, first is a positive integer that specifies the first category in the range. It is followed by a hyphen character (-) and then last, a positive integer that specifies the last category in the range. The value of first must be less than the value of last, or the range will be ignored.

The level is a positive integer. A level of 0 causes sendmail to produce no output for the category.

When the -d is specified with neither category nor level, an internal sendmail default is used:

0-99.1

This default causes sendmail to set all the categories, from zero through 99 inclusive, to a level of 1.

When category is included but level is omitted, the value for level defaults to 1. When a dot (.) and level are included, but category is omitted, the value for category defaults to 0.

The maximum value that can be ...