/usr/bin/mail ignores aliases in $HOME/.mailrc

[Daniel Barrett]

1. Put an alias in $HOME/.mailrc

alias foo <email address hidden>

2. Try to mail the alias:

$ echo hello | /usr/bin/mail -s testing foo

3. Read /var/log/mail.log and see "foo" bounce as an unknown user:

Sep 7 11:15:39 mycomputer postfix/local[9707]: EE038F6028B: to=<email address hidden>, relay=local, delay=0.1, delays=0.07/0/0/0.03, dsn=5.1.1, status=bounced (unknown user: "foo")

4. However, my other mail programs, such as Emacs VM, respect the aliases in $HOME/.mailrc.

[Scott Kitterman (kitterman)]

Does the postfix documentation say it supports this?

[Daniel Barrett (dbarrett-m)]

Interesting question. Ubuntu definitely supported $HOME/.mailrc aliases in version 10.04 (with its installed postfix).

Also, the "mail" command has supported $HOME/.mailrc since the 1980s, even pre-Linux. It would be (IMHO) pretty unwise/unlikely to drop support for a config file that Linux scripts worldwide have depended on for decades. That would be like bash dropping support for $HOME/.bashrc.

Is /usr/bin/mail even part of postfix? It's not in any postfix package in 13.04 (see bug #1222179) but somehow gets installed.

[Daniel Barrett (dbarrett-m)]

After some investigation, it seems /usr/bin/mail is part of the mailutils package. So this alias expansion should be happening within /usr/bin/mail and not from postfix.

[Daniel Barrett (dbarrett-m)]

OK, I have figured out a workaround with the help of askubuntu.com:

  http://askubuntu.com/questions/342607/why-does-usr-bin-mail-ignore-aliases-in-home-mailrc

Ubuntu installs the "mailutils" package by default, which (inexplicably) does not support $HOME/.mailrc aliases.

The alternative package "bsd-mailx" does support .mailrc properly. Installing this package makes everything work.

  sudo apt-get install bsd-mailx

This replaces /usr/bin/mail (and /usr/bin/mailx) with their bsd-mailx implementations.

[Daniel Barrett (dbarrett-m)]

I am leaving the bug report in place in case this is still a bug in mailutils.

[Ken Sharp (kennybobs)]

It's not a bug if it's not supposed to work in the first place.