Many thanks to:
Steve VanDevender <stevev_at_hexadecimal.uoregon.edu>
Ian Mortimer <mortimer_at_physics.uq.edu.au>
Jon Eidson <eidson_at_unix4.is.tcu.edu>
Andrew Leahy <A.Leahy_at_cit.nepean.uws.edu.au>
Mark Holohan <holohan_at_zko.dec.com>
"Allen, Mark R (PBD)" <Mark.Allen_at_pbdir.com>
Didier Godefroy <dg_at_ulysium.net>
Alan Angulo <alan_at_esu.edu>
Here are their responses:
----------
Steve VanDevender <stevev_at_hexadecimal.uoregon.edu>
A good solution for your case is to upgrade the mail hub system
to sendmail 8.8.8 or later. sendmail 8.9.0 has the advantage of
having the relay limitation code already available in the
distribution; with sendmail 8.8.8 you'd have to locate and
install third-party code for relay limitation. It's not a bad
idea to upgrade the client systems as well, but as a temporary
measure for those you can continue to run the DEC sendmail but
turn off SMTP on port 25 on all the client systems by removing
the "-bd" option from the flags passed to sendmail on startup
(edit /sbin/init.d/sendmail). This will prevent the client
systems from being used for relaying, but allow normal mail usage
otherwise.
----------
Ian Mortimer <mortimer_at_physics.uq.edu.au>
Three problems I came across setting up sendmail 8.8.8 were:
You need to modify the Makefile (I used Makefile.OSF1 in
the src/Makefiles directory). Apparently dbm with DU 4.0x
doesn't work properly so you have to use NEWDB and link
with -ldb.
You can't make the man pages under Digital Unix. You'll
get error messages if you try. I just left them out.
The m4 preprocessor that comes with Digital Unix 4.0x is
broken so if you want to build your configuration file
using m4 macros you'll have to get gnu m4 or (what I did)
use the m4 from DU 3.2G.
----------
Jon Eidson <eidson_at_unix4.is.tcu.edu>
If it will fit in your envronment, I HIGHLY recommend qmail. My initial
experiences with it have been VERY positive.
----------
Andrew Leahy <A.Leahy_at_cit.nepean.uws.edu.au>
I'd recommend Sendmail 8.9.0 because of the default anti-relay and
anti-spam rules. It is running fine here with DU4.0B/D and 'Enhanced
Security'. There are no special DU quirks... you just need a handle on
sendmail's own quirks!
If these DU boxes are truly just clients (with no local delivery of mail),
then you may want to look at using "FEATURE(nullclient,mailhub.$m)" (where
"mailhub" is the hostname for your local mail server). This converts the
clients into null mailers and sendmail talks directly to the mailserver.
You may even get away with not running 'sendmail' as a daemon. We use this
setup in our student workstation labs.
----------
Mark Holohan <holohan_at_zko.dec.com>
8.9 makes the anti-spamming features easier to configure.
You can get detaiils on configurint 8.8 spam controls from,
http://www.sendmail.org/antispam.html
Another good site for anti-spam info is
http://maps.vix.com/tsi/
If you don't mind recently released software, go with 8.9.
The Digital Internet AlphaServer Software kit 4.0 (shipped with
every Digital Unix system), includes Sendmail 8.8.8. You can
pull it for free from
ftp://ftp.digital.com/pub/DEC/IAS
It contains a utility cvt_sendmail_cf that converts V5 format
sendmail config files to V8.
----------
"Allen, Mark R (PBD)" <Mark.Allen_at_pbdir.com>
I recommend the latest version of sendmail be used. Configuring "dumb"
mail clients to forward all mail to a central "smart" relay hub is
simple and painless. There is a specific config option in
/etc/sendmail.cf which will allow you to specify a machine to act as
that central hub.
The option is:
DS <FQDN of host>
You'll also want to ensure that you have good and proper MX records in
your DNS as the latest versions of sendmail expect to find them to aid
in mail routing.
I also am a big fan of the "automatic" sendmail.cf generator cgi-bin
which uses a web interface to m4 to create a custom .cf for your site.
Very handy. Sorry I don't know the exact URL, but you should be able to
track it down fairly simply with your favorite web search engine.
{ URL of a 8.7 and 8.8 cf generator:
http://www.harker.com/gen.sendmail.cf/index.html
Couldn't find a 8.9 one...
}
----------
Didier Godefroy <dg_at_ulysium.net>
I just did my upgrade to 8.9 and tried to do the 8.8.8 before without
success, for some reason the 8.8.8 was giving me errors during compilation
and I finally gave up on that one after many hours of lost sleep over it. I
compiled 8.9 without problems and only had a small permission problem which
is now resolved, but I'm still left with an other kind of error with
sendmail not being willing to relay anything, so if you find out anything
about this, I'd like to know about it...
----------
Alan Angulo <alan_at_esu.edu>
Visit
http://www.sendmail.org/antispam.html
----------
FWIW, I decided to do a fresh install of 8.9.0 because of its default
anti-spam and anti-relay configuration. Thanks to all who responded.
--Eric
--
Eric Gatenby -=- raptor_at_mailhub.com -=- egatenby_at_mailhub.com
http://www.netaxs.com/~raptor/
PGP Keys: 0x0B9761F5 (Default) and 0x9EA39CC7
I speak for myself and only myself.
#include <disclaimer.h>
"Windows NT can be administered by an idiot and usually is." -- Unknown
Received on Wed May 27 1998 - 02:41:42 NZST