Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 11:13:19 -0600 From: Doug Poland <doug@polands.org> To: Ben <ben@cahostnet.com> Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Sendmail HELP HELP!!!! Message-ID: <20010221111319.A24238@polands.org> In-Reply-To: <000f01c09c21$af56a980$6102a00a@nhqadmin17> References: <000f01c09c21$af56a980$6102a00a@nhqadmin17>
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On Wed, Feb 21, 2001 at 11:16:42AM -0500, Ben wrote: > I have a sendmail book and have read all of the README's and INSTALL > files. These files aren't that friendly to me. Or at least I don't > get it. It's too much. I was wondering if anyone could give me a > simple version of how to compile the program and get started on the > configurations. I have the book so I can go through all the options > that way. I'm just having some problems getting it compiled and having > all of it's files in the correct place. I downloaded the 8.11.2 file. > Any help will be appreciated. If you have a web site that I can go to > that has a simplified version that will be helpful as well. > > Please not I've gone to sendmail.org and read all their documentation, > I just don't get it. > I'm in the same boat as you, but I've spent a day poking around and found a few things. Here's what I've found. I know I'll mis-state some things and am hoping more knowledgeable people will correct me. It appears that the accepted way to config a sendmail system is to use the m4 language to process .mc/.m4 files into a working (hopefully) sendmail.cf file. The sendmail book from O'Reilly and the FAQ on sendmail.org are oriented towards this, as opposed to editing a pre-built sendmail.cf directly. Using this technique (as opposed to building one from scratch) you get all the advanced processing options (poor wording) and can "easily" add your local rules in a more human friendly way. On a 4.2-RELEASE system, there are four important locations for a sendmail config... (1) /usr/src/contrib/sendmail (.mc and .m4 files here) (2) /usr/src/etc/sendmail (3) /etc/mail (4) /usr/share/sendmail (.mc and .m4 files here too) Directory(1) appears to be the location from which you would compile sendmail itself and change various .mc files to build your sendmail.cf file. Directory(2) contains the freebsd.mc file. It's the template for how sendmail.cf is built on a -RELEASE system. Also included is a bonus file (freefall.mc) that builds a sendmail.cf for hosts that simply send mail to a central hub. Directory(3) is where you put your sendmail.cf and supplementary files. I'm not sure why Directory(4) exists. Also, I don't know the difference between a .mc and .m4 file. The idea is to to build a custom .mc file (see dir(2)) that has your additional features, rules, and options. The result is a sendmail.cf that you put in dir(3). If you are using access, mailertable, virtusertable features, then you edit the samples in dir(3) then run make from dir(3) and it builds the Berkeley db files for those. This is the sum total of my knowledge so far. Now the question is how do you write your .mc files to get the configuration you want up and running. I'm trying to build a mail hub for nine Unix clients and two MS-Win clients. For me, the clients will always forward outbound mail to the hub and never receive mail. The hub in turn will relay outbound email to my ISP's SMTP server. The hub will use fetchmail to gather email from several POP servers for users. Then the hub will run IMAP so all the clients can see their email. Examining the freebsd.mc and freefall.mc has helped a lot. Also, I got my dial-up ISP's sendmail.cf from his /etc directory. It's a bare-bones config for relaying and has some useful sender re-writing rules. Again, I re-state the fact that I'm a sendmail novice too and I may be wrong in my explanations. I'm writing this to organize my thoughts and help you as best I can. If a sendmail guru wants to correct me and expand on this, PLEASE do! -- Regards, Doug To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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