[comp.mail.sendmail] Ultrix sendmail problems

idc@cs.hw.ac.uk (Ian Crorie) (04/04/91)

Martin Tomes (mt00@eurotherm.co.uk) asked me about a problem he is having:

[Martin]
| We are on some mailing lists and by the time messages get to us they
| have passed though many machines and the hop count is high, we then
| bounce the message and Joe Stoy at Oxford gets them and wishes he
| didn't.  Is there a way to persuade sendmail to allow more hops?  The
| memximum appears to be 17.  It is sendmail on an Ultrix Decstation
| which is bouncing the messages.

I discovered this problem with Sun sendmail a couple of years ago
and cured it using the (undocumented?) Oh configuration option i.e.

Oh30

added to the config file set MAXHOP to 30.   Unfortunately it doesn't
seem to be supported by Ultrix sendmail.

I suppose it might be possible to use the -h flag on the command line
to reset the hop count when the message arrives.   This presumes that
you have the source for an interface program between whatever transport
system you used to take mail into the site and sendmail (i.e. rmail.c as
supplied with UKsendmail).

I've never tried this but assuming it *does* reset the hop count, overriding
the number of Received: lines in the message header, then it should work.
It would mean problems if a message was bouncing between you and an
outside site however - it would bounce forever.   Perhaps it would be
possible to check that the message hadn't already been through your
site by looking through the Received: lines and only resetting the hop count
if it hadn't.

Does anyone have any comments on this or any better solutions (like where
he could poke the sendmail binary with adb)?



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---

keith@spider.co.uk (Keith Mitchell) (04/05/91)

| Oh30
| 
| added to the config file set MAXHOP to 30.   Unfortunately it doesn't
| seem to be supported by Ultrix sendmail.
| 
| I suppose it might be possible to use the -h flag on the command line
| to reset the hop count when the message arrives.   This presumes that

Unfortunately it is not as easy as that. I spoke to DEC support
about this, and for some reason best known to only them, the "-h"
command line option can only *REDUCE* the hop count, not increase
it. No help at all, of course.

What I would recommend you do is to fetch the latest source version
of 5.65+IDA sendmail, ready ported to Ultrix, from gatekeeper.dec.com.
This is a breeze to install, and lets you fiddle with these
parameters to your hearts content.

Keith Mitchell                  (postmaster)

Spider Systems Ltd.             Spider Systems Inc.
Spider Park    		        12 New England Executive Park
Stanwell Street                 Burlington
Edinburgh, Scotland             MA 01803
Phone: +44 31-554 9424          +1 (617) 270-3510
Fax:   +44 31-554 0649

keith@spider.co.uk              keith%spider.co.uk@uunet.uu.net
...!uunet!ukc!spider!keith      zspz01%uk.ac.ed.castle@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk

mdb@ESD.3Com.COM (Mark D. Baushke) (04/06/91)

On 5 Apr 91 12:34:42 GMT, keith@spider.co.uk (Keith Mitchell) said:

[...]
Keith> What I would recommend you do is to fetch the latest source version
Keith> of 5.65+IDA sendmail, ready ported to Ultrix, from gatekeeper.dec.com.
Keith> This is a breeze to install, and lets you fiddle with these
Keith> parameters to your hearts content.

You will find that gatekeeper.dec.com does not stock the latest
version of sendmail-5.65b+IDA-1.4.3. You will find a copy available
for FTP from uunet.uu.net, tut.cis.ohio-state.edu and the cannonical
copy is on uxc.cso.uiuc.edu:/pub/sendmail-5.65b+IDA-1.4.3.tar.Z.

Keith> Keith Mitchell                 (postmaster)

Keith> Spider Systems Ltd.            Spider Systems Inc.
Keith> Spider Park    		       12 New England Executive Park
Keith> Stanwell Street                Burlington
Keith> Edinburgh, Scotland            MA 01803
Keith> Phone: +44 31-554 9424         +1 (617) 270-3510
Keith> Fax:   +44 31-554 0649

Keith> keith@spider.co.uk             keith%spider.co.uk@uunet.uu.net
Keith> ...!uunet!ukc!spider!keith     zspz01%uk.ac.ed.castle@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk

Enjoy!
-- 
Mark D. Baushke
mdb@ESD.3Com.COM
IDA is the C++ of Sendmail -- schwartz@GROUCHO.CS.PSU.EDU (Scott Schwartz)

vixie@pa.dec.com (Paul Vixie) (04/07/91)

In article <MDB.91Apr6012200@kosciusko.ESD.3Com.COM> mdb@ESD.3Com.COM writes:
# You will find that gatekeeper.dec.com does not stock the latest
# version of sendmail-5.65b+IDA-1.4.3. You will find a copy available
# for FTP from uunet.uu.net, tut.cis.ohio-state.edu and the cannonical
# copy is on uxc.cso.uiuc.edu:/pub/sendmail-5.65b+IDA-1.4.3.tar.Z.

Righto.  IDA-1.4.3 should be called UIUC-1.4.3.  We don't use it here.

Cheers,
-- 
Paul Vixie
DEC Western Research Lab	<vixie@pa.dec.com>	<paul@vixie.sf.ca.us>
Palo Alto, California, USA	...!decwrl!vixie	...!vixie!paul