VACATION(1) | General Commands Manual | VACATION(1)

# NAME

`vacation` — provide absence notification when receiving email

# SYNOPSIS

`vacation` | `-i` [`-r` interval]

`vacation` | [`-a` alias] login

# DESCRIPTION

`vacation` returns a message to the sender of a message telling them that you are currently not reading your mail. The intended use is in a .forward file. For example, your .forward file might have:

    \eric, "|/usr/bin/vacation -a allman eric"

which would send messages to you (assuming your login name was eric) and reply to any messages for “eric” or “allman”.

The options are as follows:

`-a` alias
  Handle messages for alias in the same manner as those received for the user's login name.
`-i`
  Initialize the vacation database files. It should be used before you modify your .forward file.
`-r` interval
  Set the reply interval to interval days. The default is one week. An interval of “0” or “`infinite`” (actually, any non-numeric character) will never send more than one reply.

Messages will not be replied to if any of the following conditions are true:

- Message are not “To:” or “Cc:” a valid login (or alias supplied using the `-a` option).
- Messages are from “???-REQUEST”, “Postmaster”, “UUCP”, “MAILER”, or “MAILER-DAEMON” (where these strings are case insensitive).
- A “Precedence: bulk”, “Precedence: list”, or “Precedence: junk” line is included in the mail headers.
- An “Auto-Submitted” line is included in the mail headers with a value of anything but “no”.
- A “List-Id” line (with any value) is included in the mail headers.

The people who have sent you messages are maintained as a Berkeley DB database in the file .vacation.db in your home directory.

`vacation` expects a file .vacation.msg, in your home directory, containing a message to be sent back to each sender. It should be an entire message (including headers). For example, it might contain:

    From: eric@CS.Berkeley.EDU (Eric Allman)
    Subject: I am on vacation
    Delivered-By-The-Graces-Of: The Vacation program
    Precedence: bulk

    I am on vacation until July 22.
    If you have something urgent,
    please contact Keith Bostic <bostic@CS.Berkeley.EDU>.
    --eric

Any occurrence of the string `$SUBJECT` in .vacation.msg will be replaced by the subject of the message that triggered the `vacation` program.

`vacation` reads the incoming message from standard input, checking the message headers for either the UNIX “From” line or a “Return-Path” header to determine the sender. If both are present, the sender from the “Return-Path” header is used.

Fatal errors, such as calling `vacation` with incorrect arguments, or with non-existent logins, are logged in the system log file, using syslog(3).

# FILES

~/.vacation.db
  database file
~/.vacation.msg
  message to send

# SEE ALSO

dbopen(3), syslog(3), smtpd(8)

# HISTORY

The `vacation` command appeared in 4.3BSD.

March 31, 2022 | Debian