[comp.mail.sendmail] Network sendmail questions...

dan@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov (Daniel J. Dick) (02/01/90)

I tried compiling sendmail.5.61 and finally ended up going back to the old
version of sendmail.mx that was on our machines for the following reasons:

1--One of our file servers was previously designated to be our mail deliverer,
   and messages sent out from our diskless workstations were set up to go out
   as if they were coming from that file server instead of the individual
   workstations so that a common mail area could be shared and all of the
   workstations would not have to be running a sendmail daemon.

   After installing sendmail.5.61, the headers suddenly changed so that mail
   was going out as if it were coming from the workstations causing replies
   from the outside world to fail.  This happened without making any changes
   to any sendmail.cf files.

2--The time zones changed from PST to -0800 in the header fields.  I did not
   know if this was proper, but it was different, and that made me hesitant.

3--I could not get sendmail.5.61 to compile properly under gcc, even though
   it compiled under cc.


My knowledge is limited here so I would be very appreciative of anybody who
might be able to help me here.

-- 
Daniel J. Dick (dan@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov)
Systems Manager
NASA Ames Research Center

moore@betelgeuse.cs.utk.EDU (Keith Moore) (02/02/90)

In article <3877@bayes.ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov>, dan@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov
(Daniel J. Dick) writes:
> I tried compiling sendmail.5.61 and finally ended up going back to the old
> version of sendmail.mx that was on our machines for the following reasons:
> 
> 1--One of our file servers was previously designated to be our mail
deliverer,
>    and messages sent out from our diskless workstations were set up to go out
>    as if they were coming from that file server instead of the individual
>    workstations so that a common mail area could be shared and all of the
>    workstations would not have to be running a sendmail daemon.
> 
>    After installing sendmail.5.61, the headers suddenly changed so that mail
>    was going out as if it were coming from the workstations causing replies
>    from the outside world to fail.  This happened without making any changes
>    to any sendmail.cf files.

This is not the fault of Berkeley sendmail.  I suspect the only reason
it worked in the first place is because Sun hacked their sendmail to
be "smart" about mail clusters and to rewrite outgoing mail
appropriately.

It needs to be pointed out that different OS vendors have changed
sendmail in significant ways, often breaking things (and adding
security holes) in the process.  Rarely are these changes documented,
and if they are, there is no list of ``differences between our
sendmail and Berkeley sendmail.''  I'm sure they feel as if they are
doing us a favor.

This is the main reason I run Berkeley sendmail on all of our machines
-- not because it always works better, but because that way I can use
the same configuration file for every machine (except the DECnet
gateways).

> 2--The time zones changed from PST to -0800 in the header fields.  I did not
>    know if this was proper, but it was different, and that made me hesitant.

This behavior was recommended by RFC 1123.  The problem is there is
little or no standardization for many timezone names outside the US.
Numeric timezones are completely according to the standards.

> 3--I could not get sendmail.5.61 to compile properly under gcc, even though
>    it compiled under cc.
> 

It's not clear why you chose sendmail.mx over sendmail 5.61 based on
the ability to compile with gcc.  sendmail.mx was certainly compiled
with cc rather than gcc.

Keith Moore			Internet: moore@cs.utk.edu
University of Tenn. CS Dept.	BITNET: moore@utkvx
107 Ayres Hall, UT Campus	UT Decnet: utkcs::moore
Knoxville Tennessee 37996-1301	Telephone: +1 615 974 0822

towfiq@interlan.Interlan.COM (Mark Towfigh) (02/06/90)

In article <3877@bayes.ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov> dan@ptolemy.arc.nasa.gov
(Daniel J. Dick) writes:

     I tried compiling sendmail.5.61 and finally ended up going back to
     the old version of sendmail.mx that was on our machines for the
     following reasons:

     3--I could not get sendmail.5.61 to compile properly under gcc,
     even though it compiled under cc.

When you say it didn't "compile properly", do you mean the object
files were not created, or that you could not link the executable, or
that the executable did not run well?  Did you compile with the
-traditional option?

Hope this helps,
Mark
--
Mark Towfigh, Racal Interlan, Inc.		   towfiq@interlan.Interlan.COM

  "The Earth is but One Country, and Mankind its Citizens" -- Baha'u'llah