The
.forward
file contains a list of mail addresses or programs
that the user's mail should be redirected to.
If the
file is not present, then no mail forwarding will be done.
Mail may also be forwarded as the standard input to a program
by prefixing the line
with the normal shell pipe symbol (|).
If arguments
are to be passed to the command, then the entire line
should be enclosed in quotes.
For security reasons, the
.forward
file must be owned by the user the mail is being sent to,
or by root, and the user's shell must be listed in
/etc/shells
For example, if a
.forward
file contained the following lines:
Mail would be forwarded to
Aq [email protected]
and to the program
/usr/bin/vacation
with the single argument
nobody
If a local user address is prefixed with a backslash
character, mail is delivered directly to the user's
mail spool file, bypassing further redirection.
For example, if user chris had a
.forward
file containing the following lines: