Gary GStyle Morse <gstyle(_at_)gmx1(_dot_)com> writes:
just out of curiosity, what does the 'm' directive do/stand for?
The 'm' flag tells sendmail that if while processing a message with
multiple (envelope) recipients, multiple recipients resolve to the
same mailer and "host" (from the $# and $@ parts of what comes out of
ruleset 0), then sendmail may perform delivery with fewer invokations
of the mailer than if it had done the recipients one by one.
For example, the 'm' flag on the smtp mailer tells sendmail that it may
send more than one "RCPT TO:" command one a given connection. In the
case of procmail, the 'm' flag tells sendmail to put multiple users on
procmail's command line.
The problem with this is that procmail can only return a single exit
status to sendmail. If delivery fails for one person, procmail has to
return failure for everyone to avoid lost mail. By having sendmail
invoke a separate procmail for each recipient (that is, by leaving out
the 'm' flag) procmail can return a separate exit status for each
user.
Further sendmail questions, unless directly related to procmail, should
be answered by consulting the (excellant!) sendmail documentation,
found as doc/op/op.ps in the source tree, or the Bat Book (_Sendmail_,
published by O'Reilly and Associates), or by asking in
comp.mail.sendmail.
Philip Guenther