Defining aliases to z/OS UNIX sendmail

You can define an alias name to sendmail to represent one or more real email addresses. Sendmail expands alias names into email addresses when it sends an email. After you define an alias to sendmail, you can specify the alias name in a printer definition. You might want to define an alias for a mailing list that you need to specify in more than one printer definition or that is longer than the number of characters you can specify in a printer definition.

This is a summary of the steps you need to do to define an alias to sendmail. For more complete information, see z/OS Communications Server: IP Configuration Guide.

1. In the sendmail aliases file, /etc/mail/aliases, specify the alias name and either the real email addresses or the name of a file in which you specify the real addresses. To edit the aliases file, you must have an effective UID of 0.

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2. Run the sendmail newaliases command so that sendmail recognizes the new aliases.

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3. (Optional) Create a file in which you specify the real email addresses for the alias. This file must be readable by everyone but writeable only by the owner. All directories in its path must be readable by everyone, executable by everyone, and writeable only by the owner.

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For example, to define two aliases, dept123 and dept456:

1. Switch to an effective UID of 0:

   su 

   To use the z/OS UNIX su command, you must be permitted to the BPX.SUPERUSER profile in the FACILITY class in RACF®.

   Then, edit the sendmail aliases file using your preferred editor, for example:

   oedit /etc/mail/aliases

   Add these lines to define the email addresses for alias dept123 and the name of a file that contains the email addresses for alias dept456:

   #Define an alias and the list of addresses.
   dept123: user1@xyz.com,user2@xyz.com,user3@xyz.com
   # Define an alias and the file that contains the list.
   dept456: "include:/u/myuserid/dept456.list"

2. Update sendmail so that it recognizes the new aliases:

   /usr/sbin/newaliases

3. Create file /u/myuserid/dept456.list using your preferred editor, for example:

   oedit /u/myuserid/dept456.list

   In this file, specify the email addresses for alias DEPT456:

   user1@xyz.com,user2@xyz.com,user3@xyz.com,user4@xyz.com,
   user5@xyz.com

   Change the permissions of the file:

   chmod 755 /u/myuserid/dept456.list

   Change the permissions of the directory:

   chmod 755 /u/myuserid

For more information about the z/OS UNIX commands used in this example, see z/OS UNIX System Services Command Reference.