[comp.mail.sendmail] UK sendmail 1.4

lauriec@qmw.ac.uk (Laurie Cuthbert) (12/20/90)

Please pass this to whoever looks after UK-sendmail
===================================================

I would be grateful if you could provide a little bit of advice and
information on the UK sendmail package. However, first it would probably be
helpful if I were to give you some information on our setup in Electronic
Engineering at QMW

The structure is as follows:

  uk.ac.qmw             [ICM 3980 mainframe]    site mail server
                               |
  ---GREY-BOOK MAIL            |                ethernet/x25 links
                               |
  uk.ac.qmw.eng.oak        [Acorn R140]         dept mail server
                               |
  ---"ETHER" MAIL              |                ethernet
                               |
  uk.ac.qmw.eng.<host>  [Departmental unix hosts]
                               
The principles behind the system are:

  -  we all use the address uk.ac.qmw and the site mailer takes care of
     distributing incoming mail

  -  we do not maintain NRS tables on the dept mailer because we pass all
     outgoing mail to the site mailer to relay for us

  -  we stamp all outgoing mail as from uk.ac.qmw

In general I believe this is a fairly common structure, the problem being
that we have to use grey book mail between the dept and site mailers and
the UK sendmail configuration assumes that all JANET sites are directly
connected, ie the NRS table is maintained on the grey-book mailer. This is
not what we want as we only maintain a sub-set of addresses.

We have had considerable help from Scott Larnock at Edinburgh in getting
this going and it does work. Scott did a hand edit on the sendmail.cf file
for the dept mailer (oak) so that all uk. mail is sent to the mainframe for
onward relaying.

However, we feel that it is not fair to keep asking Scott and we must learn
more about sendmail ourselves; we have indeed done some tinkering - for
instance outgoing janet mail from OAK is stamped uk.ac.qmw (so a "reply"
comes in via the site) whereas local mail using the ether mailer is stamped
uk.ac.qmw.eng.oak so a "reply" goes directly to the machine and not out to
the mainframe and back.

From this experience and reading the README files with the distribution for
UK sendmail 1.4 there are a couple of specific points I have. It would also
be helpful if you could direct me to any reading on the structure of the
sendmail.cf file.

Specific points:

1) How can I change the MAKE in the so that uk. sites in the janet mailer
     do not default to the assumption that they are directly connected.
     What I would like to do is to have ONLY specific sites taken to be
     connected directly (these would be machines such as qmw.cs which is
     local but has to be mailed using grey book) - I would then put uk in
     the top.dom file to be relayed via the site mailer.

2) On oak I can vary the From field to show either the site of host address
     depending on which mailer is used. However, I cannot see how to do
     this on the slave dept machines because they only use the ether mailer
     - is it possible to put a definition of the From field in a couple of
     the rulesets so that it is different depending upon whether the mail
     is local or external. I do not know enough about the rulesets or the
     internal variables in the file to see how to do that.

 If you can provide some help I would be grateful.
Regards

Laurie Cuthbert

lauriec@qmw.ac.uk (Laurie Cuthbert) (01/18/91)

Did anyone manage to answer this enquiry? You may have tried to reply
round the New Year but we had electrical rewiring and the network was
shut down.



----------------------------cut here--------------
Please pass this to whoever looks after UK-sendmail
===================================================

I would be grateful if you could provide a little bit of advice and
information on the UK sendmail package. However, first it would probably be
helpful if I were to give you some information on our setup in Electronic
Engineering at QMW

The structure is as follows:

  uk.ac.qmw             [ICM 3980 mainframe]    site mail server
                               |
  ---GREY-BOOK MAIL            |                ethernet/x25 links
                               |
  uk.ac.qmw.eng.oak        [Acorn R140]         dept mail server
                               |
  ---"ETHER" MAIL              |                ethernet
                               |
  uk.ac.qmw.eng.<host>  [Departmental unix hosts]
                               
The principles behind the system are:

  -  we all use the address uk.ac.qmw and the site mailer takes care of
     distributing incoming mail

  -  we do not maintain NRS tables on the dept mailer because we pass all
     outgoing mail to the site mailer to relay for us

  -  we stamp all outgoing mail as from uk.ac.qmw

In general I believe this is a fairly common structure, the problem being
that we have to use grey book mail between the dept and site mailers and
the UK sendmail configuration assumes that all JANET sites are directly
connected, ie the NRS table is maintained on the grey-book mailer. This is
not what we want as we only maintain a sub-set of addresses.

We have had considerable help from Scott Larnock at Edinburgh in getting
this going and it does work. Scott did a hand edit on the sendmail.cf file
for the dept mailer (oak) so that all uk. mail is sent to the mainframe for
onward relaying.

However, we feel that it is not fair to keep asking Scott and we must learn
more about sendmail ourselves; we have indeed done some tinkering - for
instance outgoing janet mail from OAK is stamped uk.ac.qmw (so a "reply"
comes in via the site) whereas local mail using the ether mailer is stamped
uk.ac.qmw.eng.oak so a "reply" goes directly to the machine and not out to
the mainframe and back.

From this experience and reading the README files with the distribution for
UK sendmail 1.4 there are a couple of specific points I have. It would also
be helpful if you could direct me to any reading on the structure of the
sendmail.cf file.

Specific points:

1) How can I change the MAKE in the so that uk. sites in the janet mailer
     do not default to the assumption that they are directly connected.
     What I would like to do is to have ONLY specific sites taken to be
     connected directly (these would be machines such as qmw.cs which is
     local but has to be mailed using grey book) - I would then put uk in
     the top.dom file to be relayed via the site mailer.

2) On oak I can vary the From field to show either the site of host address
     depending on which mailer is used. However, I cannot see how to do
     this on the slave dept machines because they only use the ether mailer
     - is it possible to put a definition of the From field in a couple of
     the rulesets so that it is different depending upon whether the mail
     is local or external. I do not know enough about the rulesets or the
     internal variables in the file to see how to do that.

 If you can provide some help I would be grateful.
Regards

Laurie Cuthbert