HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Alias database access during rebuild
Keywords: alias database rebuild
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1992 01:25:41 GMT

In article <BvBCvn.62r@comp.vuw.ac.nz> tony@rata.vuw.ac.nz (Tony Martindale) writes:
>
>  We are running:
>
>	o sendmail-5.65c+IDA-1.4.4.1
>	o Fairly stock IDA cf file using xaliases etc
>	o Ultrix 4.2A Rev 47 on a DecSystem 5400
>
>  The problem is mail to valid incomming aliases bounces while the
>database is being rebuilt.

Here is roughly what I use in my 'Makefile' to rebuild aliases:

 ----------------------------------------------------

aliases.pag:	aliases
	@echo "*** Somebody has edited the aliases file, instead of xaliases"
	@echo "*** Check xaliases, then 'make newaliases'"

generics.dir aliases.dir:	xaliases
	make newaliases

newaliases:	xaliases
	rm -f aliases+
	xalparse -r -t xaliases aliases+ - | dbm -d generics+ -RL load
	/usr/lib/sendmail -bi -oA`pwd`/aliases+
	rm -f generics.dir
	mv generics+.pag generics.pag
	mv generics+.dir generics.dir
	rm -f aliases.dir
	mv aliases+	aliases
	mv aliases+.pag aliases.pag
	mv aliases+.dir aliases.dir

 ----------------------------------------------------

The basic trick is to build the database under a different name, then
move it into place.  Sendmail checks the date of the '.dir' file, and if
the file is absent, sleeps briefly and retries.  With this order of
doing things, there is a high likelihood that any running sendmail
lookup of the database will either get the complete old database or
the complete new database.  There is a theoretical chance that sendmail
will open the old 'aliases.dir' before your 'rm' and the 'aliases.pag'
after your 'mv' but this is highly improbable given the slower running
of your 'Make' with the extra overhead of process startup.

> o The /usr/lib/newaliases is run regularly via cron as the mail
>administrator.

This makes it easy.  Just run a script which does a 'cd' and a 'make'.

> o I have some subtle changes to the stock IDA sendmail.mc in to allow
>outgoing address rewriting for "non local" hosts.  These changes are
>confined to rule set 1.  This should have nothing to do with this
>problem, but with software almost anything is possible :)

Should not be a problem.  Alias building should not be using ruleset 1.

>  I can get around this by automagically shutting sendmail down, doing
>a build, then starting it again.  But I also want to be able to do
>spontaneous updates - has anyone got any clues to what may be going
>on?  While we are on the topic how does IDA deal with dbm database
>builds while everthing is running?

If I recall, there is some file locking (flock() etc).  But I prefer to
use the same sequence of commands as above for all dbm files.  That is,
rebuild under a new name, 'rm' the '.dir' file, then 'mv' the new
'.pag' and '.dir' into place in that order.  This has always worked
reliably, (and that's even with 10 cpus).
From: khalid@harlequin.co.uk (Khalid Sattar)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: nameserver and uk-sendmail
Date: 1 Oct 92 14:58:45 GMT
Organization: Glasgow University Computing Science Dept.
Return-Path: <local-uk-sendmail-workers-request@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
X-Mailer: mail-news 2.0.5


now that we have an internet connection and I am wondering how best to
reconfigure our sendmail.

In the past we had tables of janet sites, and anything with .edu or
.com etc were passed to uknet.  Now I would like to deliver them
directly where possible.  

I have selected nameserver option and using sun supplied sendmail that
understand mx records, though I am willing to replace this with ida
sendmail if there is a need.

My problem: What should go in the tcp channel file? 

     Should it be like what I did with janet site, ie list internet
     sites (which I dont think would be a good idea) in which case
     where do I get a list of sites.  A better solution would be to
     use name server lookup but then what rules should I use in tcp
     channel files?

     how can I decide if the site is smtp-able or should is be handed
     over to a gateway machine?

     Should I use something other than uk-sendmail generator 

Thanks

----------------------------------------------------------------------
			    Khalid Sattar
			   Systems Manager
     Harlequin Ltd, Barrington Hall, Barington, Cambridge CB2 5RG
	    Email: khalid@harlqn.co.uk, khalid@harlqn.uucp
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: sendmail.ida problem using alias:include files
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Mon, 5 Oct 1992 02:00:10 GMT

In article <BvM2LF.CG@Sweden.Prime.COM> hakan@Sweden.Prime.COM (Hakan Sjogren) writes:
>sendmail.ida behaves differently than SunOS4.1.1 standard sendmail
>when using alias include files.

Your problem seems to be unrelated to aliases.

>This is what I get using mail -v hlista1
>
>hlista1@mailhost... Connecting to sweden (TCP)...
>220 primse1 5.65c8/IDA-1.5 Sendmail is ready at Sun, 4 Oct 1992 20:01:46 +0100
     ^^^^^^^
 Problem #1:  This is supposed to be a fully qualified name.  I am
	guessing, that you compiled without NAMED_BIND, and your hosts
	NIS map uses unqualified hostnames.  You might try defining a
	DEFAULT_DOMAIN in your .m4 file.  This, however, is purely a
	guess.

>>>> HELO primse1
>553 Local configuration error, hostname not recognized as local

 Problem #2:Note that in the first line of the SMTP transaction transcript
it said "Connecting to sweden".  But the 220 greeting message says that
you have really connected to 'primse1'.  This is potentially an infinite
loop situation, and this is what sendmail is complaining about.  Are
'sweden' and 'mailhost' both aliases to the same machine 'primse1'?  If
so, the problem is that 'mailhost' is not being recognized as local by
placing it in PSEUDONYMS.  Or perhaps you have defined RELAY_HOST and
RELAY_MAILER, with the RELAY_HOST being sweden which is an alias for
'primse1'.  I can't tell from here, since DNS doesn't tell me anything
much about 'primse1', so I assume you are behind a firewall.

Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: boehme@unvax.union.edu (Eric M. Boehm)
Subject: Re: Need help configuring for GENERICFROM (LONG)
Keywords: sendmail ida GENERICFROM aliases
Organization: Union College, Schenectady, NY
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 14:35:30 GMT

rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>>When I try to make newaliases with ./sendmail -bi -Oa`pwd`/aliases, I get

>>    /usr/local/lib/mail/aliases+: line 10: cannot alias non-local names

>This is a little strange.  It sounds as if you have modified 'Sendmail.mc'
>or else you are using a version if IDA earlier than 5.65c.  If the latter,
>there is a comment near the beginning of ruleset 0 indicating what you
>need to change.  The specific problem that arises is that earlier
>version did not recognize '$&f' on the LHS of a rewrite rule.

Something indeed must have been wrong. I bit the bullet and replaced
everything with sendmail-5.65c+IDA-1.4.4.1. The aliases are now
working properly.

Thanks for the hint.
-- 
Eric M. Boehm
Eric.Boehm@union.edu
BOEHME@UNION.BITNET
From: tfrandse@ncrsoph.Sophia.NCR.COM (Torben Frandsen)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Problem with sendmail
Date: 1 Oct 92 14:47:46 GMT
Reply-To: tfrandse@ncrsoph.Sophia.NCR.COM (Torben Frandsen)
Distribution: world
Organization: NCR European Development Center


Attention, sendmail experts, I need your help !

We use the sendmail program is used for exchanging mail between our unix box
(NCR Tower) and Microsoft Mail (on the PC) via SMTP. Our problem is that 
messages which have been queued by sendmail never get delivered. The process 
which checks the queue reports that the messages are locked. It doesn't matter 
if the message was deferred or queued directly. I can find no lf* file which 
would indicate that locks were in place. Sendmail runs on a Tower 32/700 and 
comes from Wollongong WIN-TCP rel. 4.01.01.14.

Any help will be greatly appreciated, as will references to sources of
information. This must be a rather simple problem, but since I have practically
no manual or documentation, I'm stuck.

-------
* Torben Frandsen    NCR Europe Group ISS                Phone: +33 9294 4530 *
* OCCA Dept.         25, Routes des Lucioles               Fax: +33 9294 4545 *
*                    06560 Valbonne, FRANCE    Torben.Frandsen@Sophia.NCR.COM *
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: ojala@funet.fi (Petri Ojala)
Subject: Re: Wanted: 8-bit without  char-conversion-tables
Organization: Finnish University and Research Network
Date: 27 Sep 92 15:25:32


> we have sendmail-5.65c8/IDA1.5 and we're looking for a(n easy) way to
> modify the source, so that sendmail can do without the 
> character-conversion-tables and still transmits 8-bit-characters.

I usually change the #ifdef BIT8 in util.c (IDA Sendmail) to #ifdef
BIT8PASS.

After that change I can either pass 8-bit mail (only BIT8PASS defined)
or have full mnemonic 8-bit support (both BIT8 and BIT8PASS defined).
(or leave both undefined and have fully 7-bit sendmail)

Regards,
Petri Ojala
FUNET
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: Sendmail and DNS
Date: 5 Oct 92 14:50:39 GMT
Organization: Northern Illinois University

In article <1992Oct5.050449.2214@newsserver.rrzn.uni-hannover.de> riepe@ifwhp1.ifw.uni-hannover.de (Michael Riepe) writes:
>In article <1992Sep29.040104.17791@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>|> In article <1992Sep28.234733.48733@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> wca0@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (W. Cody Anderson) writes:
>|> >Good day.  I am running a Sun SPARCStation 1+ and SunOS 4.1.2.  The machine a
>|> >currently the name server for its domain.  I am running sendmail.mx.
>|> >...

>|> In 'sendmail.cf', just change:
>|> 
>|> R$+			$@$1<@$m>			tack on our domain
>|> 
>|> to:
>|> 
>|> R$+			$@$1<@$w>			tack on our hostname
>
>I prefer this one:
>
>R$+		$@$1<@$w.$m>			tack on our FQDN
>
>With <@$w> only, the Reply-To: field may be wrong (e.g. user@host) when sending to a foreign host, and therefore it might be still impossible to reply to you.

The original posting did specify that 'sendmail.mx' was in use.  Normally
with sendmail.mx, $w is already fully qualified, and $w.$m will expand
to something like HOST.MY.DOMAIN.MY.DOMAIN which you definitely do not
want.

If $w is not already fully qualified with sendmail.mx, something is broken.
If you have access to DNS and are not using sendmail.mx, some mail will
not get through.  If you do not have access to DNS, or are forwarding
everything to a forwarder and not using sendmail.mx, then '$w.$m' would
be more appropriate.
From: fletcher@cs.utexas.edu (Fletcher Mattox)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: malloc, sendmail.fc, and SunOS 4.1.2
Date: 28 Sep 1992 20:45:39 -0500
Organization: CS Dept, University of Texas at Austin
NNTP-Posting-Host: deepthought.cs.utexas.edu

In article <1992Sep23.150052.19071@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
|In article <lc0ut0INNg5@deepthought.cs.utexas.edu> fletcher@cs.utexas.edu (Fletcher Mattox) writes:
|>When I brought my (heavily hacked) sendmail 5.64 over to a SunOS 4.1.2
|>machine, I quickly learned there was a problem with malloc'ed memory
|>and freeze files.  Many processes got stuck in a very tight cpu
|>loop in malloc(3) or free(3).  Apparently reading the freeze file
|>into BSS has clobbered a malloc/free data structure somehow.
|>Has anyone seen this before?
|
|Try static linking.  At least part of the problem is with the way
|information about dynamic linking is stored.

Static linking didn't help.  My problem was definitely related to the
SunOS malloc.  I switched to a Kinglsey malloc (actually the malloc
distributed with perl and INN) and the problem disappeared.  It works
just fine with dynamic linking and a frozen cf.  I never did learn why
the SunOS malloc failed, though.
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: dhesi@cirrus.com (Rahul Dhesi)
Subject: setting mailer userid
Organization: Cirrus Logic Inc.
Date: Wed, 7 Oct 1992 00:52:04 GMT

When using IDA sendmail, is there any way of forcing a mailer to be
executed under a specific userid (rather then daemon or root)?  So far
I haven't found any way of doing this other than either making the
mailer be setuid to the desired user, or setting the default mailer
userid to the desired user for *all* mailers.  Both solutions have some
disadvantages.
-- 
Rahul Dhesi <dhesi@cirrus.com>
also: dhesi@rahul.net
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: James B. Wilkinson <wilkins@cs.cofc.edu>
Subject: Forwarding works only with mail coming from same machine
X-Xxdate: Thu, 1 Oct 92 17:31:02 GMT
Organization: The College of Charleston
X-Useragent: Nuntius v1.1.1d11
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 92 21:29:11 GMT

We are using sendmail5.65c+IDA1.4.4 on a 68020 box named izzy running
4.3BSD.  One of our users (pother) has a NeXT machine and wants to get
his mail there.  The rest of us use elm on izzy or pop clients on Macs
talking to a pop daemon on izzy.  We put a .forward file in pother's home
directory on izzy to send his mail to his NeXT.  It used to work.

Now mail will be forwarded to the NeXT if it originates on izzy.  Mail
from any other machine, on or off campus just disappears.  It probably is
returned to the sender in a couple of days.  We have a DECsystem 5000/240
named stono running Ultrix 4.2 and a sendmail compiled from the same
source as izzy's.  If we put a .forward in pother's $HOME on stono and
send mail to pother@stono.cs.cofc.edu, everything works fine, and he gets
it on the NeXT.

It seems that this problem arose about the time that name service was
moved from izzy to stono.  That doesn't give me a clue.  It may not even
be related to the problem, but we think they happened about the same
time.  The MX record still directs mail for the cs.cofc.edu domain to
izzy, and I still get my mail.

I'm baffled.  Any help would be appreciated.  Nobody here knows enough
about sendmail to even guess how forwarding works or how to debug stuff
like that.  Is there some way to get sendmail to tell us useful stuff
about why this isn't working?

PROBLEM SOLVED!!!!!!!

I'm continuing this post out of curiosity.  Typing that last line punched
the correct button in my brain to get me to look in the syslog file. 
Oodles of domain lookup failures from sendmail.  Killing and restarting
the sendmail daemon fixed the problem.  Is this because the sendmail
daemon, having found a local nameserver when it was started two weeks ago
or whenever, decided that was the way to get addresses and never checked
again?  Then the nameserver moved to another machine last week, and the
sendmail daemon doesn't know to look in resolv.conf.  That could explain
why mail originating on izzy still worked: the sendmail process forked by
the user agent was a new one and looked in resolv.conf since it found no
local named when it started up.  Can anybody confirm, deny, correct any
of this?  Thanks. 

Pother's comment was, "It looks like somebody gave izzy an enema."

-------------------------------------------------------------
Jimmy Wilkinson            | Professor of Computer Science
wilkins@cs.cofc.edu       | The College of Charleston
(803) 792-8160             | Charleston      SC        29424
From: A.Macpherson@bnr.co.uk (Andrew Macpherson (Postmaster))
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: nameserver and uk-sendmail
Date: 1 Oct 92 19:26:38 GMT
Organization: Glasgow University Computing Science Dept.
Phone: +44 279 402423
Organisation: BNR Europe, HARLOW, Essex CM17 9NA, GB
Return-Path: <local-uk-sendmail-workers-request@dcs.gla.ac.uk>
X-Mailer: mail-news 2.0.5


Khalid Sattar wrote:
| 
|      Should it be like what I did with janet site, ie list internet
|      sites (which I dont think would be a good idea) in which case
|      where do I get a list of sites.  A better solution would be to
|      use name server lookup but then what rules should I use in tcp
|      channel files?
| 
|      how can I decide if the site is smtp-able or should is be handed
|      over to a gateway machine?
| 
|      Should I use something other than uk-sendmail generator 

Well my version of the generator creates (for IDA only)
S17
R$+@$J                  $@<$1@$J>error

R$*$=Z                  $:$1$2.NSTRY

R$*@$*.NSTRY            $:$1::$[$2$:$2.NSFAIL$]
R$*::$*.NSFAIL          $:$1@$2
R$*::$*                 $@<$1@$2>$2.tcp

Where class Z is the set of domains (top or whatever level) which one
suspects may have DNS records.  The section reads:

If this is my domain I've goofed
R$+@$J                  $@<$1@$J>error

If this looks likely Tag it as a possible
R$*$=Z                  $:$1$2.NSTRY

If there is a DNS record bingo!  otherwise tag as no-go
R$*@$*.NSTRY            $:$1::$[$2$:$2.NSFAIL$]

If no-go restore to normal format,
R$*::$*.NSFAIL          $:$1@$2

If we had a hit above assume that the maildomain is SMTP addressable, resolve
to the tcp channel:

R$*::$*                 $@<$1@$2>$2.tcp

This is very specific to IDA sendmail, I hope it may help you though.  In
terms of your question above you now have to pick the set of domains (class
Z), for which you are prepared to bet a DNS timeout that there really is a
DNS record to resolve your purported mail address.
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: marten@ilt.fhg.de (Lutz Marten)
Subject: Mailing direct to a host, how to teach sendmail to do ?
Keywords: sendmail.cf CS
Reply-To: marten@ilt.fhg.de
Organization: FhG-ILT
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 92 14:45:07 GMT


Hello,
I want to configure a ULTRIX 4.2 sendmail.cf in a way, that the machine contact specified hosts directly and not via the unknown address resolver. So I entered the host name in the CS field:

##_SMTPLISTE_CS_SMTPHOST_
CShost.domain

but the machine sends again via the unknown address resolver specified in the DX field. I tried a telnet host.domain 25 and I can connect directly to host.domain. So what is the fault in my approach. Sorry for asking a FAQ, but I'm a sendmail "beginner". :-)
Thanx !
--
# Lutz Marten,  Postmaster and general dogsbody 
# Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft Institut fuer Lasertechnik 
# BITNET: KQ040MA@DACTH11 , InterNet: marten@ilt.fhg.de                        
# HEPNET: 13533::52714::MARTEN, Phone: +49/241/8906-112, -0
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: Sendmail Master-Client
Date: 29 Sep 92 19:50:46 GMT
Organization: Northern Illinois University

In article <92Sep29.173133.29935@acs.ucalgary.ca> tktran@acs.ucalgary.ca (Trang Kim Tran) writes:
>
>It works like a charm.  One more question: 
>	/usr/lib/sendmail -F"New Full Name" smith
>
>Sendmail doesn't use the specified Full Name in the From field;
>it used my default Full Name from /etc/passwd.  Do you know
>how to make this work??

This (the '-F' option) only works when the sender address 'smith' would
select the 'local' mailer if used for delivery.  It will not work if
you mail that address off to your server, for the '-F' option is not
passed along to the server.  Your problem here is since you do not
deliver any mail locally on a client, no address is considered to be
local, and 'sendmail' only adds a full name when it considers the
sender to be local.

One alternative is to build the whole message, headers and all, in a
file, and pipe that into sendmail.
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: gary@vitellocmc.ca (Gary Braida)
Subject: SUMMARY: Acknowledgements in Unix sendmail
Reply-To: gary@scorpio.ic.cmc.ca
Organization: Canadian Microelectronics Corporation
Distribution: na
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 13:31:00 GMT

I posted a question earlier this week regarding whether or not Unix sendmail
supports any type of acknowledgement.  For example, if I send a message to
user@domain I want to know if the mail got to user@domain and ultimately if
user@domain read the mail.

When I originally posted the question I was fairly vague when describing the
environment I am working in so I will briefly explain that now.  All our
Unix machines are Sun workstations of various models all running SunOS 4.1.1
Rev B.  Our windowing environment is OpenWindows 3.0 and most users use
mailtool but there are some that use mail.

Summary
-------

   The current set of Unix sendmail protocols DO NOT support any type of
   automatic acknowledgement facility that will inform the sender that the
   intended receiver of the message actually read the message.  The only way to
   verify that the receiver read the message is to have the receiver manually
   respond after he/she has read the message.

   You can however get an automatic acknowledgement that the message was
   received by the receivers mailer (remote mailer).  To do this you
   must add an additional field to the header of your message.  The field
   is called "Return-Receipt-To:" and the body of the field should be
   ideally your mail address.  In the case of SunOS you can add the 
   following line to your .mailrc to support this.

        set additionalfields='Return-Receipt-To:your_name@your_domain'


I gave this a try and it works fine.  I would like to thank those who
responded,

          Bob.Ashley@oasis.gtefsd.com
          wllarso@somnet.sandia.gov
          dlc@lanl.gov
          neitzel@ips.cs.tu-bs.de


-- 

Gary Braida             |     Canadian       |       ******  *******  ******
email:  braida@cmc.ca   |  Microelectronics  |      *       *  *  *  *
phone:  (613) 545-2914  |    Corporation     |     ******  *     *  ******
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: Confused about wildcard MX records and GENERIC aliases
Keywords: MX wildcard hidden host
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 21:15:15 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.021114.10391@unvax.union.edu> boehme@unvax.union.edu (Eric M. Boehm) writes:
>
>My confusion is because there is a wildcard MX record
>
>*	MX	100	unvax.union.edu
>
>Do I also need an MX record
>
>union.edu	MX	100	unvax.union.edu
>
>Or, is *.union.edu not a match for union.edu? (Or is this a
>nonsensical question?)

Not only is '*.union.edu' not a match for 'union.edu', but it is not
even a match for 'unvax.union.edu'.  The '*' only matches names which
are not found elsewhere in the DNS database.  Since 'unvax' is already
present with A and HINFO records, the '*' will not match it.

Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: emurphy@cs.uno.edu (Edward Murphy)
Subject: (?) setting acknowledgement on the command line
Organization: University of New Orleans
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1992 21:35:00 GMT


howdy.

is there a command line switch to request an acknowledgement when a  
message is sent? i've heard that there is such an "undocumented" feature.

ed
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
From: fbap2042@nusunix1.nus.sg (MEEMBAT SHANKAR)
Subject: Needed: How to email to ernet from INternet
Organization: National University of Singapore
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 08:46:13 GMT


I have been unable to email to nodes in INDIA at 'ernet.in'
I have someone at iisc,Bangalore, India who I would like to
contact. All I recieved was a reply informing me that efforts to deliver
the mail was unsuccessful. Would appreciate if someone has a solution
Please mail to fbap2042@nusunix1.nus.sg

Thanking you in advance


Shankar M 
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail