WYNTK: UNIX System Admininistrator

You can find out who is on a mail alias.

Most computerized offices have mail “aliases” for groups of people in a single department, or groups of people with a particular interest. At our office, we have groups called writers, editors, managers, sales, marketing, and production, for various departments throughout the company. We also have groups for people invested into our 401k program, people who take public transportation to work, and people who use Macintosh computers. And all employees belong to ora, a group for the entire company.

On UNIX machines that use sendmail, these aliases are defined in a file called /etc/aliases or /usr/lib/aliases. It’s useful to be able to track down an alias if you want to know who mail is going to before you send it out. The aliases file is the place to start if you want to trace an alias.

For example, if someone wanted to know who was on the writers alias, he or she might look for this line:

writers: eap, paula, lmui, val, jerry, tim

There are six people on the writer’s alias, and I’m one of them. The quick way to get this information is to just grep through the aliases file:

% grep writers /etc/aliases
# All the known writers, that are employed by ORA
writers: eap, paula, lmui, val, jerry, tim

In addition to user names, an alias might also list a filename. In that case, the mail is not only sent to any users listed, but it is also archived in the specified file.

Alternatives to .plan

I have other, better, ways of revealing my personality than a .plan ...