Sun sendmail

[m...@maths.qmw.ac.uk]

In Sun's manuals a system for having only one mail server (one copy of
the mail spool directory) is described. We are thinking of going over
to that system. Before I tie the department's mail in knots can anyone
advise me
1. What locking mechanism does Sun's sendmail use? Would it be compatible
with running mmdf on some machines on the net?
2. Are there any problems in using the uk-sendmail configuration package
with Sun's sendmail (so far I have used it with BSD sendmail only)?
3. Are there any good reasons for avoiding using Sun's version of sendmail?
Thanks for any help you can give

[Andrew Findlay]

|1. What locking mechanism does Sun's sendmail use? Would it be compatible
|with running mmdf on some machines on the net?

This is entirely a matter of what program you nominate as the `local'
mail delivery agent. Sendmail itself does not touch user's mailboxes.
Many people use /bin/mail for local delivery. We dont, so I cannot
help on locking details.

|2. Are there any problems in using the uk-sendmail configuration package
|with Sun's sendmail (so far I have used it with BSD sendmail only)?

Probably OK, though you may have conflicts with the NIS-based aliases
mechanism.

|3. Are there any good reasons for avoiding using Sun's version of sendmail?

Probably. Particularly if you have a mixture of Sun and non-Sun kit to
look after it is much easier if sendmail is identical on all of them.

If you have not applied patches to sendmail within the last month,
contact Sun *immediately* for patches 100377-04 and 100630-01
(the latter one is not sendmail-related, but you should ask for it
anyway).

Alternatively, pick up a copy of the UK-maintained source:

Host: src.brunel.ac.uk
User: ftp
Pass: your e-mail address
File: sendmail.5.61.IDA.tar.Z
Mode: BINARY

or by NIFTP:

Host: uk.ac.brunel.src
User: guest
Pass: your e-mail address
File: <SRC>sendmail.5.61.IDA.tar.Z
Mode: BINARY

This is not the latest and greatest version (I do not use sendmail in
anger any more) but it does have a lot of security fixes and will
compile on a wide range of machines.

Better still, convert to PP.

Andrew
--

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| From Andrew Findlay at Brunel University, Uxbridge, UB8 3PH, UK |
| Andrew....@brunel.ac.uk +44 895 203066 or +44 895 274000 x2512 |
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[Neil Rickert]

In article <920626085...@qmwms.maths.qmw.ac.uk> m...@maths.qmw.ac.uk writes:
>1. What locking mechanism does Sun's sendmail use? Would it be compatible
>with running mmdf on some machines on the net?

'sendmail' does not do locking. [Well, yes it does, for its queue files and
its alias database, but that is only of internal concern.]

Remember that sendmail does not deliver mail to mailboxes. It passes the
message to a delivery agent to do that.

On Suns, the mailbox locking is done by creating the file mailbox.lock,
which is why the mail spool directory is publically writeable. Lock must
be consistent between the delivery agent [ /bin/mail ] and the user
mail reading agent [ /usr/ucb/Mail for example].