Robert Moskowitz <rgm <at> htt-consult.com> writes: Personal and systemwide distribution lists It is also possible to create a personal distribution lists so that, for instance, the user can send mail to 'cohorts' and have it go to a group of people. Such lists can be defined by placing a line like alias cohorts bill ozalp jkf mark kridle@ucbcory in the file .mailrc in the user's home directory. The current list of such aliases can be displayed with the alias command in mailx. System wide distribution lists can be created by editing /etc/aliases, see aliases(5) and sendmail(8); these are kept in a different syntax. In mail the user sends, personal aliases will be expanded in mail sent to others so that they will be able to reply to the recipients. System wide aliases are not expanded when the mail is sent, but any reply returned to the machine will have the system wide alias expanded as all mail goes through sendmail. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ So, the answer is that you can create aliases in mailx but these are different than /etc/aliases. Sounds like a historical artifact that came into existence when mailx was created as mail eXtended and it was reasonable to just want to send mail to folks who resided on the same system as you with no MTA involved. Cheers, Dave