In reading my Linux Admin books and looking at the help files I am confused about what entries to enter into sendmail.mc. To date I have not had to configure sendmail since I use a class in PHP that is straight, however I am learning how to use Concrete5 for my local Rotary club and it apparently needs sendmail.
My smtp provider is smtp.sonic.net and it requires user name and password. Is there a simple example that could guide me on setting the parameters in sendmail.mc? I believe doing the "make" after is straight forward.
Todd
2012/12/2 Todd Cary todd@aristesoftware.com:
In reading my Linux Admin books and looking at the help files I am confused about what entries to enter into sendmail.mc. To date I have not had to configure sendmail since I use a class in PHP that is straight, however I am learning how to use Concrete5 for my local Rotary club and it apparently needs sendmail.
My smtp provider is smtp.sonic.net and it requires user name and password. Is there a simple example that could guide me on setting the parameters in sendmail.mc? I believe doing the "make" after is straight forward.
install postfix and read the docs. thanks.
-- Eero
On 12/02/2012 08:09 PM, Eero Volotinen wrote:
2012/12/2 Todd Cary todd@aristesoftware.com:
In reading my Linux Admin books and looking at the help files I am confused about what entries to enter into sendmail.mc. To date I have not had to configure sendmail since I use a class in PHP that is straight, however I am learning how to use Concrete5 for my local Rotary club and it apparently needs sendmail.
My smtp provider is smtp.sonic.net and it requires user name and password. Is there a simple example that could guide me on setting the parameters in sendmail.mc? I believe doing the "make" after is straight forward.
install postfix and read the docs. thanks.
Big +1 on that one...
Cheers,
Phil...
Am 02.12.2012 21:09, schrieb Eero Volotinen:
2012/12/2 Todd Cary todd@aristesoftware.com:
In reading my Linux Admin books and looking at the help files I am confused about what entries to enter into sendmail.mc. To date I have not had to configure sendmail since I use a class in PHP that is straight, however I am learning how to use Concrete5 for my local Rotary club and it apparently needs sendmail.
My smtp provider is smtp.sonic.net and it requires user name and password. Is there a simple example that could guide me on setting the parameters in sendmail.mc? I believe doing the "make" after is straight forward.
install postfix and read the docs. thanks.
Not a good advice for someone who already has some experience with Sendmail but none with Postfix. He'll have to read docs either way, but staying with Sendmail spares him the effort of reinstallation (including probable breakage of his running installation), and reading the docs of a familiar product (Sendmail) is much easier than reading the docs of an unfamiliar one (Postfix).
Note that I am saying nothing about the relative merits of Postfix and Sendmail. But indiscriminately recommending to someone who has a specific and easily solved problem with product A to drop product A completely and use product B instead is rarely good advice.
Ym2c, Tilman
On 12/2/2012 2:46 PM, Tilman Schmidt wrote:
Not a good advice for someone who already has some experience with Sendmail but none with Postfix. He'll have to read docs either way, but staying with Sendmail spares him the effort of reinstallation (including probable breakage of his running installation), and reading the docs of a familiar product (Sendmail) is much easier than reading the docs of an unfamiliar one (Postfix).
except he doesn't have a working configuration with sendmail and is apparently a novice, so the postfix recommendation is, IMHO, a good one.
On 12/2/2012 6:08 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 12/2/2012 2:46 PM, Tilman Schmidt wrote:
Not a good advice for someone who already has some experience with Sendmail but none with Postfix. He'll have to read docs either way, but staying with Sendmail spares him the effort of reinstallation (including probable breakage of his running installation), and reading the docs of a familiar product (Sendmail) is much easier than reading the docs of an unfamiliar one (Postfix).
except he doesn't have a working configuration with sendmail and is apparently a novice, so the postfix recommendation is, IMHO, a good one.
Why? Once upon a time, many years ago, I tried postfix. I ended up removing it and installing sendmail. I've been using sendmail since the early 1980's, when we were running the Eric Allman code from UCB on a VAX 780 under BCD Unix. And, yes, I recognize this as a religious topic and I'm not trying to start a flame war. Why, in your opinion, is postfix superior to sendmail.
Harold (who's first linux system was slackware 1.0)
On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 6:52 PM, Harold Pritchett harold@uga.edu wrote:
On 12/2/2012 6:08 PM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 12/2/2012 2:46 PM, Tilman Schmidt wrote:
Not a good advice for someone who already has some experience with Sendmail but none with Postfix. He'll have to read docs either way, but staying with Sendmail spares him the effort of reinstallation (including probable breakage of his running installation), and reading the docs of a familiar product (Sendmail) is much easier than reading the docs of an unfamiliar one (Postfix).
except he doesn't have a working configuration with sendmail and is apparently a novice, so the postfix recommendation is, IMHO, a good one.
Why? Once upon a time, many years ago, I tried postfix. I ended up removing it and installing sendmail. I've been using sendmail since the early 1980's, when we were running the Eric Allman code from UCB on a VAX 780 under BCD Unix. And, yes, I recognize this as a religious topic and I'm not trying to start a flame war. Why, in your opinion, is postfix superior to sendmail.
Harold (who's first linux system was slackware 1.0)
You were probably more comfortable running sendmail because you had a long history of using it. I once tried to give emacs a fair shake, but since I had already used vi for a long time, I didn't like it. I'm honest enough to say that it was mostly because I was comfortable with vi, and not that there's anything wrong with emacs [1].
Conceptually, the fact that sendmail requires a makefile and a bunch of macros just to generate the configuration pretty clearly points to *something* being wrong, or at least anachronistic, with the design. Objectively, it performs all of its tasks within the same process, adding significantly to potential security issues.
Postfix uses simple name=value syntax but can still get as complex as you need, if you do. It also segregates functions into different processes, isolating areas that might pose higher security risks.
❧ Brian Mathis
[1] This is just an anecdote. Please for the love of Linus do not reply to the vi vs emacs statement.
On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 6:25 PM, Brian Mathis brian.mathis+centos@betteradmin.com wrote:
Conceptually, the fact that sendmail requires a makefile and a bunch of macros just to generate the configuration pretty clearly points to *something* being wrong, or at least anachronistic, with the design.
If you don't like things that use traditional unix tools for the purposes they were designed, why are you interested in using linux at all? From a user perspective making a few changes to sendmail.mc and restarting the sendmail service is quite easy.
On 12/2/2012 5:47 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
If you don't like things that use traditional unix tools for the purposes they were designed, why are you interested in using linux at all? From a user perspective making a few changes to sendmail.mc and restarting the sendmail service is quite easy.
I once knew my way around the 'rules' in the .cf file. thats truly some evil arcane magic in there.
On 12/03/2012 01:54 AM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 12/2/2012 5:47 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
If you don't like things that use traditional unix tools for the purposes they were designed, why are you interested in using linux at all? From a user perspective making a few changes to sendmail.mc and restarting the sendmail service is quite easy.
I once knew my way around the 'rules' in the .cf file. thats truly some evil arcane magic in there.
Whilst bowing in due deference to people who've been using *nix/Linux since it required a piece of string, two tin cans & coven in order to achieve results, I was under the impression that nowadays, unless you actually need some functionality that sendmail has & nothing else possesses, the received wisdom for novices when setting up all things mail was using postfix in its place.
All documentation I've ever read regarding postfix starts with declaration that postfix is a replacement for sendmail, it's widely recommended as a replacement & having used postfix after attempting to use sendmail, I can see why (I too have Eric Allman's big book & also have read anecdotes written by Brian Kernighan on its origins & very interesting & enlightening they are too). But surely, the effort required to be competent enough to use it properly far outweighs the benefits just for the casual user.
Cheers,
Phil...
On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 8:22 PM, Phil Dobbin bukowskiscat@gmail.com wrote:
If you don't like things that use traditional unix tools for the purposes they were designed, why are you interested in using linux at all? From a user perspective making a few changes to sendmail.mc and restarting the sendmail service is quite easy.
I once knew my way around the 'rules' in the .cf file. thats truly some evil arcane magic in there.
Whilst bowing in due deference to people who've been using *nix/Linux since it required a piece of string, two tin cans & coven in order to achieve results, I was under the impression that nowadays, unless you actually need some functionality that sendmail has & nothing else possesses, the received wisdom for novices when setting up all things mail was using postfix in its place.
Well, there was a time when a lot of stuff was broken or badly designed in sendmail, and starting from scratch might have made sense, but meanwhile sendmail has been fixed and is now probably one of the most carefully audited piece of code around. And while you _can_ write original sendmail .cf code to make it do things that no one ever thought of before, almost no one needs to do that anymore. Instead, you start with the nearly-working sendmail.mc that RH/CentOS includes and change the few parts you need for your local setup. These changes are just to invoke already written macros that are already in place for pretty much everything you might want a mailer to do. Or you use the milter interface to add new program steps like spam filtering (postfix has that too, now).
All documentation I've ever read regarding postfix starts with declaration that postfix is a replacement for sendmail, it's widely recommended as a replacement & having used postfix after attempting to use sendmail, I can see why (I too have Eric Allman's big book & also have read anecdotes written by Brian Kernighan on its origins & very interesting & enlightening they are too). But surely, the effort required to be competent enough to use it properly far outweighs the benefits just for the casual user.
Correct - unless you have very unusual needs, you shouldn't tackle direct changes to sendmail.cf. But a casual user is going to just cut and paste a few lines from a reference, tutorial, or email answer into their sendmail.mc or postfix configs without understanding the full scope of their capabilities anyway. And at that level there isn't a big difference in what it takes to make them work - especially given that the distro comes with pretty close to working configs already. And once they work, in most cases you don't need to which is running.
On Mon, 2012-12-03 at 02:22 +0000, Phil Dobbin wrote:
On 12/03/2012 01:54 AM, John R Pierce wrote:
On 12/2/2012 5:47 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
If you don't like things that use traditional unix tools for the purposes they were designed, why are you interested in using linux at all? From a user perspective making a few changes to sendmail.mc and restarting the sendmail service is quite easy.
I once knew my way around the 'rules' in the .cf file. thats truly some evil arcane magic in there.
Whilst bowing in due deference to people who've been using *nix/Linux since it required a piece of string, two tin cans & coven in order to achieve results, I was under the impression that nowadays, unless you actually need some functionality that sendmail has & nothing else possesses, the received wisdom for novices when setting up all things mail was using postfix in its place.
All documentation I've ever read regarding postfix starts with declaration that postfix is a replacement for sendmail, it's widely recommended as a replacement & having used postfix after attempting to use sendmail, I can see why (I too have Eric Allman's big book & also have read anecdotes written by Brian Kernighan on its origins & very interesting & enlightening they are too). But surely, the effort required to be competent enough to use it properly far outweighs the benefits just for the casual user.
+1 - and really a lot more.
Having lived in the Unix/Linux environment for > 20 years I will definitely state that for someone new to the mail server environment the learning curve for Postfix is a lot less than it is for Sendmail. When I needed to set up a mail filter/server I was pointed to Postfix by another Unix guy and that was probably the best thing that happened to me for that area. I had what I needed in less than a day, and refinements and tuning done a couple of days later.
If you're just starting in the mail server area, it's tough to beat Postfix for ease of configuration.
Cheers,
Phil...
CentOS mailing list CentOS@centos.org http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
On Sun, Dec 2, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Phil Dobbin bukowskiscat@gmail.com wrote:
Whilst bowing in due deference to people who've been using *nix/Linux since it required a piece of string, two tin cans & coven in order to achieve results, I was under the impression that nowadays, unless you actually need some functionality that sendmail has & nothing else possesses, the received wisdom for novices when setting up all things mail was using postfix in its place.
That would be uucp (equivalent to string), a Telebit Trailblazer modem (= can), and a severely modified version of a UCB sendmail config file to make sure that non-local traffic ended up at a host running 'pathalias' [1], to prevent it from making a major detour (= dark magic).
On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 05:54:06PM -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
I once knew my way around the 'rules' in the .cf file. thats truly some evil arcane magic in there.
My old SA interviews used to include a line of sendmail.cf to see if the applicant recognised it. At the time (SunOS 4, Solaris 5) we didn't have mc files, just the cf :-)
On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 10:46:29PM -0500, Stephen Harris wrote:
On Sun, Dec 02, 2012 at 05:54:06PM -0800, John R Pierce wrote:
I once knew my way around the 'rules' in the .cf file. thats truly some evil arcane magic in there.
My old SA interviews used to include a line of sendmail.cf to see if the applicant recognised it. At the time (SunOS 4, Solaris 5) we didn't have mc files, just the cf :-)
I vaguely remember (or it may have even been from bash.org or freedbsd irc funnies) where someone in irc posted, after making a mistake
#$#$!!!!#
And someone answered, Please don't post your sendmail config in channel. :)
Am 03.12.2012 02:54, schrieb John R Pierce:
I once knew my way around the 'rules' in the .cf file. thats truly some evil arcane magic in there.
Well, yes. I once knew how to program in assembly language, too.
But that's not argument for or against Sendmail. The .cf file is a generated file. No one is supposed to hack it directly under normal circumstances.
T.
On 12/3/2012 2:46 PM, Tilman Schmidt wrote:
Am 03.12.2012 02:54, schrieb John R Pierce:
I once knew my way around the 'rules' in the .cf file. thats truly some evil arcane magic in there.
Well, yes. I once knew how to program in assembly language, too.
But that's not argument for or against Sendmail. The .cf file is a generated file. No one is supposed to hack it directly under normal circumstances.
the m4 macros and the .mc syntax are pretty arcane too.
On 12/2/2012 3:52 PM, Harold Pritchett wrote:
Why? Once upon a time, many years ago, I tried postfix. I ended up removing it and installing sendmail. I've been using sendmail since the early 1980's, when we were running the Eric Allman code from UCB on a VAX 780 under BCD Unix. And, yes, I recognize this as a religious topic and I'm not trying to start a flame war. Why, in your opinion, is postfix superior to sendmail.
you are a sendmail expert. I too have been using sendmail for umpteen years (since the early 90s with UUCP, anyways), and feel comfortable in it, and haven't to date been willing to put in the effort to switch..
The OP, on the other hand, appears to be a novice ("To date I have not had to configure sendmail since I use a class in PHP that is straight, however I am learning how to use Concrete5 for my local Rotary club and it apparently needs sendmail...."). I'd suggest postfix because its configuration interface is cleaner and simpler (the whole .mc -> .cf thing in sendmail is truly arcane).
On 12/2/2012 3:52 PM, Harold Pritchett wrote:
you are a sendmail expert. I too have been using sendmail for umpteen years (since the early 90s with UUCP, anyways), and feel comfortable in it, and haven't to date been willing to put in the effort to switch..
The OP, on the other hand, appears to be a novice ("To date I have not had to configure sendmail since I use a class in PHP that is straight, however I am learning how to use Concrete5 for my local Rotary club and it apparently needs sendmail...."). I'd suggest postfix because its configuration interface is cleaner and simpler (the whole .mc -> .cf thing in sendmail is truly arcane).
I agree. When first trying to configure sendmail years ago, I remember how painful it was. "Giving birth to a flaming porcupine", comes to mind. Postfix is about as easy as I was always thinking sendmail should be.
Now if only they'd do something like that for BIND...
______________________________________________________________________ If life gives you lemons, keep them-- because hey.. free lemons. "♥ Sticker" fixer: http://microflush.org/stuff/stickers/heartFix.html
Am 03.12.2012 20:13, schrieb Joseph Spenner:
I agree. When first trying to configure sendmail years ago, I remember how painful it was. "Giving birth to a flaming porcupine", comes to mind. Postfix is about as easy as I was always thinking sendmail should be.
Now if only they'd do something like that for BIND...
what exactly is complicated in BIND configuration?
writing a backend to generate some hundret of domain-zone-files out of mysql took one night and the template for named.conf is simple
Am 02.12.2012 20:53, schrieb Todd Cary:
In reading my Linux Admin books and looking at the help files I am confused about what entries to enter into sendmail.mc. To date I have not had to configure sendmail since I use a class in PHP that is straight, however I am learning how to use Concrete5 for my local Rotary club and it apparently needs sendmail.
My smtp provider is smtp.sonic.net and it requires user name and password. Is there a simple example that could guide me on setting the parameters in sendmail.mc? I believe doing the "make" after is straight forward.
Todd
See
http://www.sendmail.org/~ca/email/auth.html
"Using sendmail as a client with AUTH"
Alexander
On 12/02/2012 08:53 PM, Todd Cary wrote:
PHP that is straight, however I am learning how to use Concrete5 for my local Rotary club and it apparently needs sendmail.
Are you sure it requires the Sendmail MTA, or just the sendmail (compatible) binary (which is actually what PHP requires by default to send out mail)? If the latter, consider using ssmtp or similar if you already have an MTA in your network (especially if it is already configured with DKIM, SPF, etc...), just keep in mind to configure it securely (ie. using TLS especially if using authentication). Otherwise default installation of Postfix works out of the box, you might just want to adjust the `myhostname` setting.
-
Alexander Dalloz -
Brian Mathis -
Eero Volotinen -
Gé Weijers -
Harold Pritchett -
John R Pierce -
Joseph Spenner -
Les Mikesell -
Phil Dobbin -
Reindl Harald -
Ron Loftin -
Scott Robbins -
Stephen Harris -
Tilman Schmidt -
Todd Cary -
Vlad K.