PICKUP(8)

NAME
pickup - Postfix local mail pickup

SYNOPSIS
pickup [generic Postfix daemon options]

DESCRIPTION
The pickup daemon waits for hints that new mail has been dropped into the world-writable maildrop directory, and feeds it into the cleanup(8) daemon. Ill-formatted files are deleted without notifying the originator. This program expects to be run from the master(8) process manager.

STANDARDS
None. The pickup daemon does not interact with the outside world.

SECURITY
The pickup daemon runs with superuser privileges so that it 1) can open a queue file with the rights of the submitting user and 2) can access the Postfix private IPC channels. On the positive side, the program can run chrooted, opens no files for writing, is careful about what files it opens for reading, and does not actually touch any data that is sent to its public service endpoint.

DIAGNOSTICS
Problems and transactions are logged to syslogd(8).

BUGS
The pickup daemon copies mail from file to the cleanup(8) daemon. It could avoid message copying overhead by sending a file descriptor instead of file data, but then the already complex cleanup(8) daemon would have to deal with unfiltered user data.

CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS
The following main.cf parameters are especially relevant to this program. See the Postfix main.cf file for syntax details and for default values. Use the postfix reload command after a configuration change.

Content inspection controls

content_filter
    The name of a mail delivery transport that filters mail and that either bounces mail or re-injects the result back into Postfix. This parameter uses the same syntax as the right-hand side of a Postfix transport table.

Miscellaneous

always_bcc
    Address to send a copy of each message that enters the system.

mail_owner
    The process privileges used while not opening a maildrop file.

queue_directory
    Top-level directory of the Postfix queue.

SEE ALSO
cleanup(8) message canonicalization
master(8) process manager
syslogd(8) system logging

LICENSE
The Secure Mailer license must be distributed with this software.

AUTHOR(S)
Wietse Venema
IBM T.J. Watson Research
P.O. Box 704
Yorktown Heights, NY 10598, USA