SUMMARY: sendmail 4.1 vs. YP aliases

From: Jim Frew (frew%crseo@hub.ucsb.edu)
Date: Tue Jan 16 1990 - 19:39:45 CST


Restatement of the problem:

        This problem involves the "4.1 pre-release" sendmail running on
        SunOS 4.0.3 on assorted Sun-3 systems.

        After reading about the alleged security problems in Sun 4.0.3
        sendmail, I snarfed the 4.1 pre-release sendmail from
        uunet.uu.net. Trouble is, the new sendmail doesn't find my YP
        mail aliases (it DOES find the aliases in my ~/.aliases file).

First of all, the quick fix that saved me:

rlk@tusun2.mcs.utulsa.edu ( Richard L. Kruse II)

        You probably already know this, but you might wish to check
        your sendmail.cf, and make sure it knows which alias file to
        check. You should check /var/yp/Makefile to make sure the two
        agree.

        in /etc/sendmail.cf:
                # location of alias file
                OA/etc/aliases

        in /var/yp/Makefile...
                ALIASES = /etc/aliases

Sure enough, I had OA/usr/lib/aliases in my sendmail.cf. Apparently
the 4.1 sendmail actually looks at the alias file, instead of just
checking with YP. Since all my clients use the same aliases, I just
moved the alias file back to /usr/lib and put symbolic links to it in
all the /etc's. Things work fine now.

Honorable mention to:

drk@Rational.COM (David Kaelbling)
amdcad!proton!scott@ames.arc.nasa.gov (Scott McMahon)
        
        who both reported observing the same behavior I did.

bobby@hot.caltech.edu (Bobby Bodenheimer)

        who did NOT encounter the broken aliases on a 4/260.

trinkle@cs.purdue.edu (Daniel Trinkle)
sob@tmc.edu (Stan Barber)

        who recommended I run sendmail 5.61 with Stan's patches.

        In case anyone else wants to try this, the source for sendmail
        5.61 is available in
                ucbarpa.berkeley.edu:~ftp/4.3/sendmail.tar.Z.
        and the patches are in
                bcm.tmc.edu:~ftp/public/sendmail.5.61.patch.

halstern@Sun.COM (Hal Stern - SysAdmin)

        who asked me to keep him posted on what I found out (Sun IS
        listening ...)

Thanks everybody!

#-----------------+-----------------------+-----------------------------
# Jim Frew | frew@crseo.ucsb.edu | Computer Systems Lab., UCSB
# +1 805 961 8413 | frew@ucsbuxa (BITNET) | Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA



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