cevert@airgun.wg.waii.com (Christopher C. Evert) (03/28/91)
I am installing sendmail v5.65 + IDA 1.4.2 on an IBM RT and I want to take advantage of xalparse to generate my aliases and genericfrom databases. I used ida/lib/xaliases as the model for my xaliases file and generated what to me looked like a good aliases file, but when I ran sendmail -bi, it complained about `@'s in the left hand side. So, I tried to get ida/aux/dbm to generate the .pag and .dir file. (This file got created with 2 links and all, but I don't know how to look at it for correctness, which may be my problem after all.) Now, when I send mail to an alias, I eventually get an ... User unknown message. The generics database seems to work just fine. So, my question is: How do I build a correct aliases database? -- For you Latin scholars: Is UNIX pronounced "yoo-nine" or "yoo-no-vem"? Christopher C. Evert cevert@airgun.wg.waii.com uunet!airgun!cevert
rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) (03/28/91)
In article <929@airgun.wg.waii.com> cevert@airgun.wg.waii.com (Christopher C. Evert) writes: >I am installing sendmail v5.65 + IDA 1.4.2 on an IBM RT and I want to take >advantage of xalparse to generate my aliases and genericfrom databases. >I used ida/lib/xaliases as the model for my xaliases file and generated >what to me looked like a good aliases file, but when I ran >sendmail -bi, it complained about `@'s in the left hand side. Using aliases with an '@' is tricky as it technically violates a design assumption of sendmail. In IDA-1.4.2, and all earlier versions, the basic method was to create a separate 'sendmail.cf' - usually called 'newaliases.cf' which is created with the NEWALIASES keyword defined in the M4 sources. Since then there have been several changes and improvements. I strongly recommend you pick up the 1.4.3 configuration package. If you have access to 'rcs', you can pick up the rcs archive from mp.cs.niu.edu:/pub/cf which contains both 1.4.2 and 1.4.3, together with some experimental versions (1.4.3.7 is the latest). With the new versions the aliases source file requires slightly different formatting for addresses with an '@' on the left of the alias. There is a shell script 'xalparse.sh' in the same directory which converts the output of xalparse into the required form. Or if you wan to experiment, I will soon put a revised experimental version of xalparse.c in that same directory. >So, I tried to get ida/aux/dbm to generate the .pag and .dir file. I am not sure whether this works or not. But you would have to use the dbm parameter to add the @: @ marker at the end. Otherwise 'sendmail' will assume the database is being rebuild by another process, and will wait for it. After the wait times out, it probably refuses to use what it assumes to be an incomplete database. (It probably complains in your syslog files too). -- =*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*= Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science <rickert@cs.niu.edu> Northern Illinois Univ. DeKalb, IL 60115 +1-815-753-6940