From: alevine@ucsd.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin
Subject: Agony (aka sendmail)
Date: 2 Oct 92 19:17:48 GMT
Reply-To: alevine@ucsd.edu
Organization: University of California, San Diego
NNTP-Posting-Host: dial-slip18.ucsd.edu

I know, I know, this group has received countless postings about sendmail,  
especially since 3.0 started to ship.  I have followed them, followed  
their replies, even tried to implement suggestions, and my mailing  
facility remains almost non-functional.

Here's what I have:

1.  A NeXTStationColor (non-turbo, running NS 3.0), 440MB internal HD,  
170MB external, NeXT CDROM drive.

2.  An installed SLIP driver (Louis Mamakos' DialUp IP, with CSLIP  
enabled), which gives me access to SLIP service with temporary addressing  
that changes every time I bring up the connection; i.e. I can't receive  
mail by SLIP, since I don't have a permanent IP address.  I'm running  
Newsgrazer through an nntp host over SLIP right now.

3.  A functioning UUCP connection with a local campus server, through  
which I receive all my mail.  This is my one and only uucp partner.

Here's what I want to do:

1.  Queue all outgoing mail for shipment through my uucp connection,  
regardless of address format.  Ideally, I would like the uucp connection  
to be brought up ever time a letter is queued.  At present, the SLIP  
connection is brought up every time a letter is queued, even when (as with  
messages addressed in the old style) the queued letter ultimately ends up  
somewhere in /usr/spool/uucp, and is shipped the next time uupoll is run.

2.  Receive mail by uucp without the SLIP connection being brought up.   
This probably bothers me more than anything else.  After my uucp server is  
polled and mail is received, sendmail waits for the uucp connection to  
come down, tries to bring up the SLIP connection, and only then ships the  
received mail to local recipients.  The crazy thing is, it doesn't even  
need to access the nameserver in my /etc/resolv.conf--it just needs to  
try.  This is a major inconvenience when the modem is needed for other  
purposes.

Here's what I have tried:

1.  Countless variations on the shipped sendmail.cf files.  There are  
minor differences in their effectiveness when it comes to shipping mail by  
ddn, but none do what I want them to.

2.  Using the old sendmail.  My immediate predecessor on the road to  
sendmail madness, or at least the last one who shared his experiences with  
this group, suggested using the /usr/lib/sendmail and  
/etc/sendmail/sendmail.cf from the 2.1 release.  I have tried installing  
the old versions of these files, with the correct permissions, but the  
result is that my NeXT hangs at boot time, at precisely that point in the  
/etc/rc script when it should be running sendmail.  Surprised?  Perhaps  
sendmail has links I am neglecting, or perhaps it needs to be invoked  
differently from /etc/rc.  Any takers?

Thank you all for reading this far.  If ever I have helped any of you, or  
even if I haven't, yet, I hope you will have pity on me.  If the same sort  
of thing is bothering you, let me know, and I'll summarize responses here.

Alex Levine
alevine@ucsd.edu	NeXTMail accepted
Newsgroups: comp.sys.next.sysadmin