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sendmail administration

sendmail administration

sendmail(ADMN) is one of two mail routers provided by SCO OpenServer(TM). While the default router, MMDF, provides several key benefits, sendmail is most widely used router in the UNIX community. For a comparison to MMDF, see ``Comparison of sendmail with MMDF''.

To enable and configure sendmail as your mail delivery agent, enter:

   mkdev cf

See ``Standard sendmail configuration'' for a description of mkdev cf.

Once sendmail is initially configured, see the sendmail Operation Guide for more information on configuring sendmail for your needs.

Please note the following:

The table below lists current and previous sendmail manual pages.

aliases(SFF) aliases file for sendmail
editmap(ADMN) query and edit single records in database maps for sendmail
lmail(ADMN) handle local mail delivery from sendmail
mailaddr(ADMN) mail addressing description
mailq(ADMN) print the mail queue
mailstats(ADMN) print statistics collected by sendmail
makemap(ADMN) create database maps for sendmail
mconnect(ADMN) connect to SMTP mail server socket
newaliases(ADMN) rebuild the data base for the mail aliases file
praliases(ADMN) display system mail aliases
rmail(ADMN) handle remote mail received via UUCP
sendmail(ADMN) an electronic mail transport agent
sendmail.cf(SFF) sendmail configuration file
smrsh(ADMN) restricted shell for sendmail
vacation(C) e-mail auto-responder

Standard sendmail configuration

Execute the command mkdev cf to perform sendmail configuration. The major tasks of mkdev cf are to:

The default configuration created here supports both UUCP and Internet style addressing. The user entered information allows a network administrator to designate a machine on the network as the UUCP gateway machine, which will process all UUCP requests for the net or subnet. If an X.400 gateway is specified by the user information, sendmail also will forward mail that is addressed in X.400 style to that gateway. The user information also provides for telling sendmail to use NIS maps to define mail aliases.

Running mkdev cf

When ready to configure sendmail, enter:

mkdev cf.

A menu with eight items appears. sendmail remembers the user inputs entered the last time mkdev cf was run and displays those entries as the current state/value. The following describes the menu items, including which are mandatory and which are optional.


1. Edit UUCP Connections
If you wish this host to forward mail to other machines via UUCP, you must enter the names of those machines here. You can enter them manually or let this script get them with the uuname command.

2. Edit Domain
This is a mandatory item. You must either enter a domain name manually (for example, your_company.com) or let this script assign it using the hostname command.

3. NIS Support
Network Information Service (NIS) is a networked system administration service that provides a facility (maps) for maintaining mail aliases. See ``How NIS works'' for more information. If you wish to use NIS maps to define aliases, answer yes to the initial prompt under this menu item. The script will run the domainname command to obtain the NIS domain name. If domainname returns successfully, this script displays the NIS domain name. If it is unsuccessful, it will warn you that NIS does not appear to be installed. You may quit this configuration to install NIS or you may complete the remainder of this configuration, then install NIS, and then reconfigure sendmail, executing this step again.

4. Edit Alternate Host Names
This menu item is optional; but if mail is addressed to your machine by names other than that returned by the hostname or uuname utilities, you must enter these names here in order to receive that mail.

5. Miscellaneous Items
This menu item displays a submenu of four items regarding network connections to this host. All these network connections have a default status of no. If the status of any of these should be yes, select that item and respond accordingly. When the status of these four items is correct for this host, select menu item 5 to return to the main menu.

6. Review configuration information
This menu item displays the current state or values of the configuration parameters set with items one to six.

7. Generate sendmail.cf file
This item first invokes menu item #7. After you press <Enter> it prompts you with this message:

Do you wish to change anything? [y/n]

If you enter y (yes), it returns you to the main menu. If you enter n (no), it generates the file /usr/lib/sendmail.cf from one through six menu items and from a default configuration source file. If /usr/lib/sendmail.cf already exists, this script saves the old sendmail.cf file as /usr/lib/sendmail.cf-. When finished, it displays that the new file has been installed, it kills the sendmail daemon if one is running, and starts a new daemon. It then returns you to the main menu.


8. Quit
Use this item to quit after generating the new configuration file or if you want to interrupt the configuration process.

© 2005 The SCO Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
SCO OpenServer Release 6.0.0 -- 26 May 2005