SUMMARY: 4.1.3 sendmail

From: Danielle Sanine (danielle@systems.caltech.edu)
Date: Mon Dec 14 1992 - 22:52:53 CST


Sun Managers,

My apologies for the delay in posting this summary. My original
posting was:

|When I upgraded to 4.1.2 we had many problems with sendmail and were
|advised to use 4.1.1 sendmail instead. Now I have upgraded to 4.1.3
|and I need to know if the 4.1.2 sendmail bug has been fixed? I
|would swear that mail is disappearing under 4.1.3, but I have not
|had time to investigate thoroughly. Any other warnings about 4.1.3
|are welcome also.

|Thanks in advance, I will summarize if there is interest.

I received 15 responses, most requesting that I summarize. 3 people
said they were not having any problems with 4.1.3 sendmail. Several
others said they had either had problems or were using older versions
of sendmail to avoid problems. It was also suggested that I apply
the lockd patch - 100075-09 as this is still not fixed in 4.1.3.
Another recommendation was to use smail instead of sendmail. Still
another recommended installing patch 100377-05 or blocking the OR
option on the clients and put small rewrite rerule.

The most complete response cam from Jeff Pack and is included below. I
still do not feel that I have a definitive answer since people disagree
about 4.1.3 sendmail. If anyone from Sun is reading this, I would
really appreciate more feedback...

Thanks to:
jpack@fnoc.navy.mil (Jeff Pack)
fallan@baobab.awadi.com.AU (Frank Allan)
bob@krf.com (Bob Herrmann)
ast@geoquest.com (Aditya Talwar)
peter@key.amdahl.com (Peter Sivo)
Mike Raffety <miker@il.us.swissbank.com
jiml@uts.amdahl.com (James Latimer)

----- Begin Included Message -----

>From jpack@fnoc.navy.mil Wed Dec 2 15:21:36 1992
From: jpack@fnoc.navy.mil (Jeff Pack)
Subject: Re: 4.1.3 sendmail
To: danielle@systems.caltech.edu
Date: Wed, 2 Dec 92 23:22:34 GMT
X-Mailer: ELM [version 2.3 PL11]
Content-Length: 2445

Yes, it's still broke. Here's my latest list of fixes...

1. Shared library

> The first was with sendmail itself. The symptoms were that mail was being
> shunted around the network correctly between sendmail's, but when it arrived
> at the sendmail that should actually have done the local delivery (ie the
> machine the alias pointed at) it was failed to deliver with a User Unknown
> error. The problem was that sendmail was being started in /etc/rc.local at a
> time when the /etc/ld.so.cache file did not exist - sendmail was trying to
> locate a shared library and failing to do so. The solution was to move the
> sendmail startup to a point after the rebuild of ld.so.cache:
>
> #
> # Build the link-editor fast directory cache.
> #
> if [ -f /usr/etc/ldconfig ]; then
> ldconfig; echo "link-editor directory cache"
> fi
>
> ##
> # Wed Mar 11 19:56:16 GMT 1992
> # phil - sendmail has to be here for ld.so.cache
> ##
> if [ -f /usr/lib/sendmail -a -f /etc/sendmail.cf ]; then
> (cd /var/spool/mqueue; rm -f nf* lf*)
> /usr/lib/sendmail -bd -q1h; echo "mail delivery agent
> (sendmail)"
> fi

2. sendmail.fc

> Throw away the /etc/sendmail.fc file and restart sendmail.

also related to sendmail.fc

> The second problem we had was DNS related. The /etc/sendmail.fc had been
> built on a non-DNS'd machine, the lookup into the frozen config file is a
> function of the hostname and so mail was failing to find a machine in
> the fc file due to the changes in fully and non qualified domain names. The
> solution was to simply rebuild the fc file on a DNS'd machine.

3. OW3 $OPENWINHOME/bin/mail will sometimes get executed if root's
    path gets screwed up.

> In OW3, there are mail and Mail programs, make sure that you aren't
> executing those (sendmail uses /bin/mail as its delivery agent).

4. Sun *finally* responds with two "official" fixes.

> Sun has finally given the following offical suggestions:
> ******************************************************
> 1. start sendmail after ldconfig in /etc/rc.local
> 2. throw /etc/sendmail.cf away.
> ******************************************************

-- 
Jeff Pack
Grumman Data Systems                              jpack@fnoc.navy.mil
Fleet Numerical Oceanography Center, Bldg. 700    Phone:  (408) 647-4647
Monterey, CA 93943-5005                           FAX:  (408) 647-4648
    "Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug."

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