About Aliases in Elm

As mentioned previously, there exists in the elm system a set of aliases that associate an arbitrary word (such as a persons name) to a complex address or group. The advantages are readily apparent; rather than remembering an address of the form:

Two alias tables are available for a each user within elm, namely the system alias file and the user's alias file. The system alias file is created and maintained (by the system administrator) by editing the file SYSTEM_ALIASES as defined in the `sysdefs.h' file (see The Elm Configuration Guide - not available on-line) and as described in the documentation with the newalias command, then running the newalias program.

An individual user can also have an alias file which works in conjunction with the system aliases. To do this, they need merely to peruse the documentation for the newalias command and create a file as indicated therein. After executing the program, the aliases will be available for using from within elm.

Please refer to The Elm Alias Users Guide (not available on-line) for more helpful hints and so on.

Within elm, however, the alias system acts as an entirely different program, with its own commands and own mini-menu. The menu replaces the standard mini-menu with:

a)lias current message, d)elete an alias, check a p)erson or s)ystem,

l)ist existing aliases, m)ake new alias or r)etur

Alias: @

Alias Commands

a

Alias current message. This allows the user to create an alias that has the return
address of the current message as the address field of the alias. It prompts for a
unique alias name. Important note: when you alias an address in this fashion, the
mailer will try to minimize the amount it needs to store by iteratively comparing
machine names in the path with the machines in the pathalias database. Once it finds
an entry the address will be saved at that point. For further information, please see
The Elm Alias System Users Guide (not available on-line).

d

Delete an existing alias. This allows the user to delete an alias the user has previously
made. It prompts for the alias name, and displays the alias information, if found, and
then prompts for confirmation to delete.

l

List all existing aliases. This simply lists all the aliases you have previously made.

m

Make user alias. This will prompt for a unique alias name and then for an address. The
information provided will be added to your individual aliases.text file
($HOME/.elm/aliases.text) and then added to the database.

p

Check personal alias. This is a simple way of checking what is in the alias database
\(em it prompts for an alias name, and returns the address associated with that name
or the error message `alias not found' as appropriate.

r

Return. Return to the main level of the elm program.

s

Check system alias. If you're not sure that your machine can talk to another machine,
you can use this command to either find the appropriate route or find that you're
correct in your suspicions and it is indeed unknown!

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