.TH qmail-getpw 8
.SH NAME
qmail-getpw \- give addresses to users
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B qmail-getpw
.I local
.SH DESCRIPTION
In
.BR qmail ,
each user controls a vast array of local addresses.
.B qmail-getpw
finds the user that controls a particular address,
.IR local .
It prints six pieces of information,
each terminated by NUL:
.IR user ;
.IR uid ;
.IR gid ;
.IR homedir ;
.IR dash ;
and
.IR ext .
The user's account name is
.IR user ;
the user's uid and gid in decimal are
.I uid
and
.IR gid ;
the user's home directory is
.IR homedir ;
and messages to
.I local
will be handled by
.IR homedir\fB/.qmail\fIdashext .

In case of trouble,
.B qmail-getpw
exits nonzero without printing anything.

.B WARNING:
The operating system's
.B getpwnam
function, which is at the heart of
.BR qmail-getpw ,
is inherently unreliable.
.SH "RULES"
.B qmail-getpw
considers an account in
.B /etc/passwd
to be a user if
(1) the account has a nonzero uid,
(2) the account's home directory exists (and is visible to
.BR qmail-getpw ),
and
(3) the account owns its home directory.
.B qmail-getpw
ignores account names containing uppercase letters.
.B qmail-getpw
also assumes that all account names are shorter than 32 characters.

.B qmail-getpw
gives each user
control over the basic
.I user
address and
all addresses of the form
.IR user\fBBREAK\fIanything .
When
.I local
is
.IR user ,
.I dash
and
.I ext
are both empty.
When
.I local
is
.IR user\fBBREAK\fIanything ,
.I dash
is a hyphen and
.I ext
is
.IR anything .
.I user
may appear in any combination of uppercase and lowercase letters
at the front of
.IR local .

A catch-all user,
.BR alias ,
controls all other addresses.
In this case
.I ext
is
.I local
and
.I dash
is a hyphen.

You can override all of
.BR qmail-getpw 's
decisions with the
.B qmail-users
mechanism, which is reliable, highly configurable, and much faster than
.BR qmail-getpw .
.SH "SEE ALSO"
qmail-users(5),
qmail-lspawn(8)