-d

-d

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Don't syslog errors

vacation command-line switch

Beginning with V8.12 sendmail , vacation logs all its error and warning messages via the syslog (3) facility (Section 14.3). Warnings are logged at LOG_NOTICE, and errors are logged at LOG_ERR.

The syslog facility reports them like this:

 Mar  1 13:30:05 lady vacation[26884]: vacation: can't open mailbox database: Service  unavailable. 

If you prefer to have these errors and warnings printed to your screen, you can use this -d command-line switch. It is better used outside your ~/.forward file because otherwise , printed errors will be sent to sendmail where they might be lost. You use the -d command-line switch like this:

 % vacation -d bob < /dev/null vacation: no such user bob. 

Here, the administrator is about to set up a ~/.forward file for a user, and tests the vacation command with this -d switch. Because the user is bbob , and not bob , the error is immediately evident. Without the -d , the error would have been logged, and that log message might have been sent to another dedicated logging host.