Computer 101, Lesson 5
How to check email aliases

Prerequisites: Computer 101, lesson 2 (How to telnet to the server)
( Note: the URLs and email addresses have been munged to prevent harassment).

The email server keeps an alias list, which automatically substitutes a name with list of recipients. For example, email addressed to "staff" would be sent to everyone listed in the alias under "staff". Anyone, including people outside the institute, can use this as an email address.

To find out who is included in an alias:

  1. Telnet to the email server.
  2. Suppose you want to find out who is included in the "br*i" alias. Type 
       checkaliases br*i
To find out what aliases are available
  1. Telnet to the email server.
  2. Type 
       listaliases
Technical details:
  1. listaliases is cat /etc/aliases | sort | cut -d ':' -f 1
  2. checkaliases is cat /etc/aliases | grep ^$1
If the 'listaliases' and 'checkalises' commands haven't been installed, use these commands instead.
name and address
January 19, 2003