dewey@execu.UUCP (Dewey Henize) (01/08/89)
I posted about 3 weeks ago that I was trying to convert our systems to using smail and do some semi-intelligent routing... Well, so far it hasn't gone too well. I still have quite a list of folks that are also interested if I can figure out the problems, but the amount of solid info has been, uh, sparse. Smail seems to compile pretty well, but I'm running into real problems with the sendmail.cf file. We're a bsd (Sun 4.0.broken) site for a main server, and a lot of dec and sun and other machines around besides that. It appears that perhaps the sendmail.cf file is not reading the /etc/hosts file at all. Pathalias seems to be going ok, we run it every night and use the add'l tools to reformat for use by smail, etc. Some basic questions... Our alias file is, as Sun recommends, of the form fred: fred@execu joe: joe@prickleypear ...etc... Is this the right form for smail/sendmail? Should there be more/less info in there? The sendmail.cf from Sun seems to be messed up, at least according to the docs I read in one of the Sun manuals. Supposedly (no, I'm not a guru, not even close) the construct for a rhs of $:$>8 should direct more processing to ruleset 8 - but there isn't a S8 in the file... duh? Again, if anyone has any ideas that could help, please send them to me. And please don't worry about repeating what you think someone else would have surely said - they didn't, and if they do I'll STILL appreciate the info and confirmation. Final note - is anyone aware of a program called [perhaps] 'ease' for use in generating config files? I tried to look it up, but I don't see it anywhere in the indexes I've downloaded. Thanks Dewey Henize -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- | There is nothing in the above message that can't be explained by sunspots. | | execu!dewey Dewey Henize | | Can you say standard disclaimer? I knew you could. Somehow... |
wisner@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Bill Wisner) (01/08/89)
In article <412@execu.UUCP> dewey@execu.UUCP (Dewey Henize) writes: >Our alias file is, as Sun recommends, of the form >fred: fred@execu >joe: joe@prickleypear >...etc... Sounds bogus to me. If fred and joe are real accounts that want to receive mail on another machine, give them .forward files. If they're not real accounts and you're setting up forwarding addresses, disregard this paragraph. >Is this the right form for smail/sendmail? The form is fine. Smail knows how to grok Sendmail's alias file format. >The sendmail.cf from Sun seems to be messed up, at least according to the docs >I read in one of the Sun manuals. Supposedly (no, I'm not a guru, not even >close) the construct for a rhs of $:$>8 should direct more processing to >ruleset 8 - but there isn't a S8 in the file... duh? If there is no ruleset 8, Sendmail will ignore that rule. >Final note - is anyone aware of a program called [perhaps] 'ease' for use in >generating config files? I tried to look it up, but I don't see it anywhere >in the indexes I've downloaded. Ease is a language reminiscent of C that you can use to specify a sendmail.cf file. The Ease program converts a file written in the Ease language into a sendmail.cf that can be digested by Sendmail. And now I wax religious: I dislike Ease. That puts me into a minority. Learning an entire new language just to keep one's mailer configured is ridiculous. Sendmail rules are simply pattern match-and-replaces. The syntax involved is actually easy to learn. The interactions between rulesets are also straightforward. The difficulty lies in knowing, in excruciating step-by-step detail, every trifling little action that must be taken to get Sendmail to deliver a message. Writing one's configuration in a different format won't change that. Ease is a waste of time. If you remain unconvinced and want to try Ease yourself, it's available from a comp.sources.unix archive. But it's still a waste of time. Bill, the man from Xanth
vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) (01/09/89)
[Henize]
# Smail seems to compile pretty well, but I'm running into real problems with
# the sendmail.cf file. We're a bsd (Sun 4.0.broken) site for a main server,
# and a lot of dec and sun and other machines around besides that. It
# appears that perhaps the sendmail.cf file is not reading the /etc/hosts
# file at all.
# [...]
# The sendmail.cf from Sun seems to be messed up, at least according to the
# docs I read in one of the Sun manuals. [...]
I recommend that you try to use the sendmail.cf file that comes with the smail
package rather than back-fitting Sun's config file to use smail for UUCP. The
Sun config file was a nightmare last time I looked at it (in fairness, the one
in Ultrix is not easy to figure out either), but the one that comes with smail
is sufficient for most purposes, is relatively simple as sendmail config files
go, and makes a great base for later additions.
There are a few gotchas in the config file that smail builds for you, and the
questions it asks you in its build script aren't very clear, but once you get
something that barely works it is only an hour's work to get it to the 99%
point, which is as far as sendmail is ever going to get you anyway.
Moral: throw out the sendmail.cf that came from your CPU vendor and use the
one that comes with smail.
--
Paul Vixie
Work: vixie@decwrl.dec.com decwrl!vixie +1 415 853 6600
Play: paul@vixie.sf.ca.us vixie!paul +1 415 864 7013vixie@decwrl.dec.com (Paul A Vixie) (01/09/89)
[Wisner] # And now I wax religious: # # I dislike Ease. [...] I agree with most of your conclusions about Ease. However, I recommend that anyone interested in understanding sendmail's raw configuration language get Ease, read all of its documentation, and play with it for a week. This is how I finally learned enough about sendmail.cf to write one from scratch. I might have stayed with Ease if it had made multi-line strings possible; my "Received:" headers spanned a physical newline and the grammar that came with Ease at that time would have taken massive hacking to make that possible. Also, Ease cannot generate the extensions used by IDA. No fault on the part of its implementors, since IDA didn't exist when Ease was first conceived. -- Paul Vixie Work: vixie@decwrl.dec.com decwrl!vixie +1 415 853 6600 Play: paul@vixie.sf.ca.us vixie!paul +1 415 864 7013
childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers) (01/19/89)
In article <7094@xanth.cs.odu.edu> wisner@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Bill Wisner) writes: >In article <412@execu.UUCP> dewey@execu.UUCP (Dewey Henize) writes: >>Our alias file is, as Sun recommends, of the form >>fred: fred@execu >>joe: joe@prickleypear >>...etc... >Sounds bogus to me. If fred and joe are real accounts that want to receive >mail on another machine, give them .forward files. If they're not real >accounts and you're setting up forwarding addresses, disregard this >paragraph. As far as I can tell, .forward files don't really fit into a LAN environment. In my case, I have about four or five YP domains, a corresponding number of networks, and need to maintain complete interconnectability, for everybody's convenience. But I can't mount everybody's home directory everywhere, that's unnecessary and crude - that's what /usr/lib/aliases is for. When I find .forward files in the LAN - usually as a result of receiving mail that looped round and round, before ending up in my mailbox as a problem report from MAILER-DAEMON - I cat /dev/null into them and chown them to root and chmod the sucker to 444 and that's that. Always use /usr/lib/aliases, and concentrate all your network problems into one place. .forward is an obsolete mechanism from a decade ago. >Bill, the man from Xanth What happened to Kent ? You guys merge ? (-: -- richard -- * Bismillah hir-Rahman nir-Rahim * * * * ..{amdahl|decwrl|octopus|pyramid|ucbvax}!avsd.UUCP!childers@tycho * * AMPEX Corporation - Audio-Visual Systems Division, R & D *
leres@ace.ee.lbl.gov (Craig Leres) (01/19/89)
Richard Childers writes: > When I find .forward files in the LAN - usually as a result of receiving > mail that looped round and round, before ending up in my mailbox as a problem > report from MAILER-DAEMON - I cat /dev/null into them and chown them to root > and chmod the sucker to 444 and that's that. This sounds gratuitously fascist to me. Luckly, it's not hard to remove such a file: helios 7 % ls -l .forward -r--r--r-- 1 root 0 Jan 18 22:40 .forward helios 8 % rm .forward rm: override protection 444 for .forward? y helios 9 % ls -l .forward .forward not found The advanced reader might want to use "rm -f .forward" Craig
roy@phri.UUCP (Roy Smith) (01/20/89)
[Regarding the selection of newsgroups, I consider it fundamentally wrong to crosspost to foo.misc as well as foo.x, foo.y, and foo.z. I've directed followups to comp.mail.sendmail since that's the most appropriate group.] In article <412@avsd.UUCP> childers@avsd.UUCP (Richard Childers) writes: > Always use /usr/lib/aliases, and concentrate all your network problems into > one place. .forward is an obsolete mechanism from a decade ago. I'd almost agree with that, except that it would be nice if people could set up things like vacation on their own (do you, as postmaster, really want to change /usr/lib/aliases every time somebody goes on vacation or comes back?) Of course, the alternative is to have sendmail (or whatever MTA you use) deal with vacation processing itself. -- Roy Smith, System Administrator Public Health Research Institute {allegra,philabs,cmcl2,rutgers}!phri!roy -or- phri!roy@uunet.uu.net "The connector is the network"
guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) (01/20/89)
>Always use /usr/lib/aliases, and concentrate all your network problems into >one place. .forward is an obsolete mechanism from a decade ago. "From a decade ago"? In other words, "sendmail" existed in early 1979? News to me. "delivermail" may have existed then, but as I remember it had "/usr/lib/aliases" but *not* ".forward" files, so "/usr/lib/aliases" *antedates* ".forward" files. ".forward" is not obsolete; it serves purposes other than to forward mail from a user's "alternate" accounts to their "primary" account. For one thing, it lets you run all your mail through a filter, or a "mail watcher" such as "vacation".... (As for mounting everybody's home directory everywhere, while it isn't necessary, it can sure be *convenient* at times - if I have to work on several different machines, it's nice to be able to have my environment travel with me.)
guy@auspex.UUCP (Guy Harris) (01/21/89)
>Of course, the alternative is to have sendmail (or whatever MTA you >use) deal with vacation processing itself. Which makes it harder to do your *own* vacation processing, if you don't like the behavior built into your MTA....