VERIFY(8)                                               VERIFY(8)

NAME
       verify - Postfix address verification server

SYNOPSIS
       verify [generic Postfix daemon options]

DESCRIPTION
       The Postfix address verification server maintains a record
       of what recipient addresses are known to be deliverable or
       undeliverable.

       Addresses are verified by submitting probe messages to the
       Postfix queue. Probe messages  are  run  through  all  the
       routing and rewriting machinery except for final delivery,
       and are discarded rather than being deferred or bounced.

       Address verification relies on the answer from the nearest
       MTA  for  the  specified  address,  and will therefore not
       detect all undeliverable addresses.

       This server is designed to run under control by the  Post-
       fix  master  server.  It  maintains an optional persistent
       database.  To avoid being interrupted by "postfix stop" in
       the  middle  of  a  database update, the process runs in a
       separate process group.

       This server implements the following requests:

       VRFY_ADDR_UPDATE address status text
              Update the status of the specified address.

       VRFY_ADDR_QUERY address
              Look up  the  status  and  text  of  the  specified
              address.  If the status is unknown, a probe is sent
              and a default status is returned.

       The server reply status is one of:

       VRFY_STAT_OK
              The request completed normally.

       VRFY_STAT_BAD
              The server rejected the request (bad request  name,
              bad request parameter value).

       VRFY_STAT_FAIL
              The request failed.

       The recipient status is one of:

       DEL_RCPT_STAT_OK
              The address is deliverable.

       DEL_RCPT_STAT_DEFER
              The  address  is  undeliverable  due to a temporary
              problem.

       DEL_RCPT_STAT_BOUNCE
              The address is undeliverable  due  to  a  permanent
              problem.

       DEL_RCPT_STAT_TODO
              The address status is being determined.

SECURITY
       The address verification server is not security-sensitive.
       It does not talk to the network, and it does not  talk  to
       local  users.  The verify server can run chrooted at fixed
       low privilege.

       The address verification server can be  coerced  to  store
       unlimited  amounts  of  garbage.  Limiting  the cache size
       trades one problem (disk space exhaustion) for another one
       (poor response time to client requests).

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

BUGS
       If  the  persistent  database ever gets corrupted then the
       world comes to an end and human  intervention  is  needed.
       This violates a basic Postfix principle.

CONFIGURATION PARAMETERS
       See  the  Postfix  main.cf file for syntax details and for
       default values. Use the postfix  reload  command  after  a
       configuration change.

Cache control
       address_verify_map
              Optional  table  for  persistent  recipient  status
              storage. The file  is  opened  before  the  process
              enters a chroot jail and before it drops root priv-
              ileges.  By default, the  information  is  kept  in
              volatile  memory,  and is lost after postfix reload
              or postfix stop.

              To recover from a  corrupted  address  verification
              database, delete the file and do postfix reload.

       address_verify_sender
              The sender address to use for probe messages. Spec-
              ify an empty value (address_verify_sender =) or  <>
              if you want to use the null sender address.

       address_verify_positive_expire_time
              The  amount  of time after which a known to be good
              address expires.

       address_verify_positive_refresh_time
              The minimal amount of time after which a  proactive
              probe  is  sent  to  verify that a known to be good
              address is still good. The address  status  is  not
              updated  when the probe fails (optimistic caching).

       address_verify_negative_cache
              A boolean parameter that controls whether  negative
              probe  results  are stored in the address verifica-
              tion cache. When enabled,  the  cache  may  pollute
              quickly  with  garbage. When disabled, Postfix will
              generate an address probe for every lookup.

       address_verify_negative_expire_time
              The amount of time after which a  rejected  address
              expires.

       address_verify_negative_refresh_time
              The  minimal amount of time after which a proactive
              probe is sent to verify that  a  known  to  be  bad
              address is still bad.

Probe message routing
       By  default,  probe  messages  are  delivered via the same
       route as regular messages.  The following  parameters  can
       be used to override specific message routing mechanisms.

       address_verify_relayhost
              Overrides the relayhost setting.

       address_verify_transport_maps
              Overrides the transport_maps setting.

       address_verify_local_transport
              Overrides the local_transport setting.

       address_verify_virtual_transport
              Overrides the virtual_transport setting.

       address_verify_relay_transport
              Overrides the relay_transport setting.

       address_verify_default_transport
              Overrides the default_transport setting.

SEE ALSO
       trivial-rewrite(8) address rewriting and resolving

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

                                                        VERIFY(8)