piet@NIC.EU.net (Piet Beertema) (12/22/90)
Ever since I upgraded from sendmail 5.61 to 5.64 a while ago I've
had problems with it. First it dumped core whenever the frozen
config was used; I traced it back to apparent messing up of the
malloc and posted some workarounds for it in this newsgroup.
Now, since a couple of days I had a consistent problem: whenever
the frozen config was used, weird things happened, like the smtp
server announcing itself not with "HOME=/" instead of the hostname
and e.g. the From: in the header being replaced by garbage. This
happened after a minor change in sendmail.cf, which in itself is
correct and does what it is expected to do.
I then switched to running without frozen config, but obviously
that causes quite some additional load on the system; especially
on a host like mcsun.EU.net (for those who don't know: roughly
speaking mcsun is for Europe what uunet is for the USA) that's
not really a good idea.
Hoping that the problem would be cured in sendmail-5.65/IDA-1.4.2
I installed that version today, only to discover that the problem
was still there. I haven't dug deep into it yet, but this is clear:
looking with 'strings' at the frozen config files produced by 5.61
and 5.6[45] there is a striking difference: in the 5.61 frozen
config strings of the config file can be found *after* the (saved)
environment items, whereas in de 5.6[45] frozen config parts of
the config file can be found *before* the (saved) environment items.
If it is assumed that the config starts at that point, it is clear
that the environment items have become a part of the config, which
in turn explains why environment items appear instead of the hostname
or in the header as described above. I think it can therefore be
safely assumed that the malloc() structure has been messed up before
the frozen config is written, which is what I found when I started
with 5.64; alas, the workarounds that I made don't help here.
If anyone has a clue I'd appreciate to hear it.
Another point is that I found that 5.65 had a workaround for the
problem with syslog() that a lot of systems have (HCX/BSD, HP-UX,
SunOS 4.0.3/4.1 all have it): give syslog() a very long string and
you'll get a coredump. The workaround in 5.65 is just truncate the
reported string. This may be acceptable for a lot of sites, but for
central (mail)hosts and gateways it's important that *all* addresses
processed show up in the (sys)logging. Here's a better workaround
that does precisely that; it spreads long strings over several log
lines, non-terminal reports being marked with "(cont'd)"; replace
the logdelivery routine in deliver.c with this one:
logdelivery(stat)
char *stat;
{
extern char *pintvl();
# ifdef LOG
# define LOGSPLIT 200
register char *p, *q;
/*
** Split up long To: lines, since the buffer in
** syslog() on various systems isn't large enough.
*/
p = CurEnv->e_to;
while (strlen(p) >= LOGSPLIT) {
if ((q = index(p + LOGSPLIT, ',')) != NULL) {
syslog(LOG_INFO, "%s: to=%.*s(cont'd), delay=%s, stat=%s",
CurEnv->e_id, q - p + 1, p,
pintvl(curtime() - CurEnv->e_ctime, TRUE),
stat);
p = q + 1;
} else
break;
}
syslog(LOG_INFO, "%s: to=%s, delay=%s, stat=%s", CurEnv->e_id,
p, pintvl(curtime() - CurEnv->e_ctime, TRUE), stat);
# endif /* LOG */
}
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
Piet Beertema, EUnet-NIC, Amsterdam (piet@mcsun.EU.net)piet@NIC.EU.net (Piet Beertema) (12/22/90)
Here's a patch to main.c that sofar indeed seems to
have cured the problem with 5.6[45] that I described
in my previous article.
In main.c the environment is reset and the preceding
comment says that this is done after the thaw. However,
the code is such that it is *always* done, whether or
not the thaw() succeeded or was even done at all.
The result is that the environment also ends up in the
frozen config file, which could lead to problems when
the frozen config is used.
*** o.main.c Sat Dec 22 03:29:37 1990
--- main.c Sat Dec 22 05:50:34 1990
***************
*** 254,268 ****
OutChannel = stdout;
#ifdef _PATH_SENDMAILFC
! if (!nothaw)
! readconfig = !thaw(FreezeFile);
#endif /* _PATH_SENDMAILFC */
-
- /* reset the environment after the thaw */
- for (i = 0; i < MAXUSERENVIRON && envp[i] != NULL; i++)
- UserEnviron[i] = newstr(envp[i]);
- UserEnviron[i] = NULL;
- environ = UserEnviron;
#ifdef NAMED_BIND
/*
--- 254,267 ----
OutChannel = stdout;
#ifdef _PATH_SENDMAILFC
! if (!nothaw && !(readconfig = !thaw(FreezeFile))) {
! /* reset the environment after successful thaw */
! for (i = 0; i < MAXUSERENVIRON && envp[i] != NULL; i++)
! UserEnviron[i] = newstr(envp[i]);
! UserEnviron[i] = NULL;
! environ = UserEnviron;
! }
#endif /* _PATH_SENDMAILFC */
#ifdef NAMED_BIND
/*
-------
--
Piet Beertema, EUnet-NIC, Amsterdam (piet@mcsun.EU.net)