karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu (07/20/90)
For the sake of my curiosity, mostly, I'd be interested in hearing how others maintain sendmail.cf. [a] m4 [b] ease [c] editing [d] ??? I don't care much for m4 (it has its purposes, yes, but I don't think this is one of them), and I never learned ease. So I edit .cf directly. Mine is heavily commented on what it's doing where and for what reason; and it includes hordes of "CONFIG HERE" comments for the sake of others who have picked it up, to give them readily identifiable spots where they need to change things. Others? --karl
Makey@Logicon.COM (Jeff Makey) (07/21/90)
I edit my .cf file directly with my favorite text editor.
I provide sendmail support to only one host other than my own, but if
my responsibilities (real or imagined) in this area were to increase,
I would adapt Larry Wall's "Configure" script (it comes with the "rn"
distribution) to the job.
:: Jeff Makey
Department of Tautological Pleonasms and Superfluous Redundancies Department
Disclaimer: All opinions are strictly those of the author.
Internet: Makey@Logicon.COM UUCP: {nosc,ucsd}!logicon.com!Makeybin@primate.wisc.edu (Brain in Neutral) (07/21/90)
I edit mine directly. But then, I only have to maintain three of them (at the moment), so it's not too onerous a task. Paul DuBois dubois@primate.wisc.edu
Guy Middleton <gamiddleton@watmath.waterloo.edu> (07/21/90)
> For the sake of my curiosity, mostly, I'd be interested in hearing how > others maintain sendmail.cf. I use m4. I run about 100 machines from the same .cf source; m4 conditionals are set for each machine automatically, as part of our distribution mechanism. It works, no problem. -Guy
ANKGC@CUNYVM (Anil Khullar) (07/21/90)
Till last week, I used emacs and globally changed hostname on the boilerplate that I have. This week (moving to 5.64) I am having second thoughts. As we started mixing services (i.e decnet hosts, internet hosts, uucp host and a mix of workstations) I am having second thoughts. It seems to me that In our case (a CUNY College) easiest was to use DRcunyvm.cuny.edu, but unfortunately if the CUNYVM is down, then some of our hosts pile up many messages. Hence I have to look more carefully at the M4 method 8-( I am waiting to see what other people are using. -anil
pst@ack.Stanford.EDU (Paul Traina) (07/21/90)
M4 works just fine for me. I took the plunge and switched over to the new files distributed with 5.61, made some additions to the prototype file, and now generate .cf files for a number of different machines ranging from uucp gateways, MX translators, and internet gateways (for a net without IP fowarding) all with those little .mc files. One thing I will note is that it's just about impossible to get sendmail (as configured this way) to work on a uucp only machine. But then again, I've got a .cf script I edit directly for that. Foo. Paul -- Buenas noches Sen~ores y Sen~oras. Bienvenidos. La prima preguntas es: ?Qu'e es m'as macho, pineapple o knife? Si! Correcto! Pineapple es m'as macho que knife. La segunda pregunta: ?Qu'e es m'as macho, lightbulb o schoolbus? No! Lo siento. Schoolbus es m'as macho que lightbulb.
dwatts@ki.UUCP (Dan Watts) (07/22/90)
In article <PST.90Jul20165609@ack.Stanford.EDU> pst@ack.Stanford.EDU (Paul Traina) writes: >M4 works just fine for me. What is this 'M4' that people have been talking about? I'm rather new to managing our Unix systems and I've been using vi on all our cf's. Our setup is strictly UUCP at the moment running on SGI, Sun 4, and IBM RS/6000's. -- ##################################################################### # CompuServe: >INTERNET:uunet.UU.NET!ki!dwatts Dan Watts # # UUCP : ...!uunet!ki!dwatts Ki Research, Inc. # ############### New Dimensions In Network Connectivity ##############
mdb@ESD.3Com.COM (Mark D. Baushke) (07/23/90)
I use m4 for all machines which are running 5.64+IDA-1.3.2. I use uxc.cso.uiuc.edu:/mail/sendmail/ida/cf/Sendmail.mc as my template. (However, the mailertable, domaintable, and uucpxtable are edited and the pathtable generated.) I also use an edited boiler-plate .cf file which for hosts running with the SunOS sendmail (these are being replaced by 5.64+IDA-1.3.2 as I have the time). -- Mark D. Baushke mdb@ESD.3Com.COM
scs@iti.org (Steve Simmons) (07/23/90)
karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu writes: >I'd be interested in hearing how others maintain sendmail.cf. >[a] m4 >[b] ease >[c] editing >[d] ??? I suppose I've have to answer [a], but the real answer is IDA. It happens to use m4, but provides reasonable docs and prebuilt macros to build the durned file for you. I built some subsidiary files call master.cf and slave.cf; our slave systems consist of only their name definitions and an include of the slave.cf. For the curious, IDA is available at most major archive sites including uunet.uu.net in the mail subdir.
Craig_Everhart@TRANSARC.COM (07/24/90)
Back when I was mail admin for andrew.cmu.edu with 8000 users, we had 600 workstations all enqueueing mail for four PO machines. They enqueued using shared files&directories in AFS. The PO machines were the only ones that ran sendmail. The .cf files were identical, and in fact were generated from a configure-mail-system process that compiled and installed dozens and dozens of scripts and things. The configuration process was driven from a program that you told about your installation, what features you wanted or didn't want, how many PO servers you had, how many AFS mail queues you had and what their names were, and the like. One of the fanciest features was doing load balancing on the PO machines, crudely compensating for different speeds of different PO machines by assigning different total amounts of work to the different machines. So, the short answer is that the sendmail.cf files were generated not by hand, but by yet another configuration process other than m4 or ease or IDA. Not that it works that well for non-Internet sites, though. Craig
towfiq@interlan.Interlan.COM (Mark Towfigh) (07/24/90)
In article <KARL.90Jul20104100@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu> karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu writes: For the sake of my curiosity, mostly, I'd be interested in hearing how others maintain sendmail.cf. [a] m4 [b] ease [c] editing [d] ??? (Warning: my responses may be specific to OS/2, but I don't think they are in this case. I have ported SENDMAIL 5.61 to this beast, and have hacked CF files there, too.) I used to think I could use option [c] exclusively. This was when our SENDMAIL was only going to have one CF file, that each administrator would edit for the site in question. Then we got a way that the CF file could remain untouched, by moving variables to a TCP/IP configuration file (but that's not really important). At the same time, we realized that we needed two flavors of CF, one for a well-connected Internet host, and one that would relay unresolvable mail to a well-connected host. And then we needed two more CF files, for hosts which had a Netware-specific delivery agent. That's four files altogether, with lots of similarities between them, and I was quickly going crazy trying to edit them. So I took a look back at the CF/CF and CF/M4 directories on the 5.61 distribution, and I read this in the README: Note: IT IS STRONGLY SUGGESTED THAT YOU, THE SYSTEM MANAGER, CONTINUE TO MAINTAIN CONFIGURATION FILES BY USING THIS m4(1) METHOD. TRYING TO MAINTAIN MULTIPLE .CF FILES ON SEPARATE MACHINES WILL LEAD TO INSANITY. I realized I was becoming insane, as a change in one file often necessitated a change in all of them, but I didn't always remember that. Also, I had no overview of how the CF file was layed out, or what parts could be omitted. What did I do? I ported m4 to OS/2 (took about 20 minutes), and started using it to build CF files. Now I am happy. I don't care much for m4 (it has its purposes, yes, but I don't think this is one of them), and I never learned ease. So I edit .cf directly. Mine is heavily commented on what it's doing where and for what reason; and it includes hordes of "CONFIG HERE" comments for the sake of others who have picked it up, to give them readily identifiable spots where they need to change things. I agree that m4 (a macro pre-processor, for those who don't know) may not be the best, but it sure beats editing. And that "CONFIG HERE" convention you use, which I used extensively as well, does not give one as much of a top-down view of what the CF file looks like as a simple m4 command. You see, what you could do is take your CF file, m4-ize it, and generate a CF file for each configuration you want, including the vanilla "CONFIG HERE" one. Once you move beyond maintaining one CF file (and I think even multiple versions of a CF file constitute more than one CF file), it is not worth the hassle to just edit. That's my $0.023 Canadian. -- Mark Towfigh, Racal InterLan, Inc. towfiq@interlan.Interlan.COM W: (508) 263-9929 H: (617) 488-2818 uunet!interlan!towfiq "The Earth is but One Country, and Mankind its Citizens" -- Baha'u'llah
Anselmo-Ed@cs.yale.edu (Ed Anselmo) (07/24/90)
The local sendmail folks at Yale have moved much of configuration
stuff out of the sendmail.cf file and into files, e.g.:
# All nicknames for this host
Fw/usr/local/lib/net_database/this_host %s
# Login names on this machine
FL/usr/local/lib/net_database/login_names %s
# Top domains in the TCP world
FD/usr/local/lib/net_database/tcp_domains %s
# Local TCP hosts
FT/usr/local/lib/net_database/yale_tcp_hosts %s
# Database person and mailing list names
FP/usr/local/lib/net_database/dbnames %s
# Ambiguous Database person and mailing list names
FI/usr/local/lib/net_database/ambignames %s
and the files in this net_database directory are hooked into update
scripts which are run out of cron. And all this stuff is tied into
"udb", the User DataBase, which keeps track of users, uids, accounts,
mailboxes, and mailing lists (/usr/lib/aliases is never edited
directly).
CS runs with 3 versions of sendmail.cf, one for a BITNET machine, one
for a UUCP machine, and one for "all the rest" (generic sendmail.cf
for hosts with resolver capability).
--
Ed Anselmo anselmo-ed@cs.yale.edu {harvard,decvax}!yale!anselmo-eddwatts@ki.UUCP (Dan Watts) (07/24/90)
Would someone be willing to post an example m4 file that they really use to show how m4 can be used? My system here doesn't have the sendmail source, just binaries, so I don't have any documentation on sendmail other than the man page. No pointers on how to use m4. The m4 man page does tell you how to use it, but a complete working program (script?) would be much more usefull. -- ##################################################################### # CompuServe: >INTERNET:uunet.UU.NET!ki!dwatts Dan Watts # # UUCP : ...!uunet!ki!dwatts Ki Research, Inc. # ############### New Dimensions In Network Connectivity ##############
wicinski@sgi.com (wicinski ) (07/25/90)
>karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu writes: > >>I'd be interested in hearing how others maintain sendmail.cf. root# rm /usr/lib/sendmail* -tim
esj@wasp.eng.ufl.edu (Eric S. Johnson) (07/25/90)
In article <KARL.90Jul20104100@giza.cis.ohio-state.edu> karl_kleinpaste@cis.ohio-state.edu writes: >For the sake of my curiosity, mostly, I'd be interested in hearing how >others maintain sendmail.cf. > I maintain sendmail.cf's on a large number of various machines/os's. What do is use a shell script which I put together which has as flags a bunch of options. Key options are the domain under ufl.edu, the hostname, if the host is the "domain head" I.E. should accept and send mail for domain.ufl.edu as well as hostname.domainname.ufl.edu., if the host runs a MX sendmail version (ill get em all running 5.6X later ;-), if the host is a ultrix decnet gateway, etc. This shell script simply runs a bunch of sed's on a generic.cf which has various options commented out untill the sed removes the comment headers on the lines. Example: The no-nameserver hosts hosts forward their mail to be final delivered by a host which digs nameservers. #NONSR$*<@$+>$* $#tcp$@$I$:$1<@$2>$3 user@host #NSR$*<@$+>$* $#tcp$@$2$:$1<@$2>$3 user@host $I is a nameserver groking host and one of these two lines gets un-commented in ruleset 0. This works with 90% of the machines. Real strangeness (and UUCP stuff ;-( ) gets hand edited. Ej