****Re: [CentOS] CentOS 5 and removing sendmail

Chris Mauritz chrism at imntv.com
Mon Dec 3 04:02:32 UTC 2007


Joseph L. Casale wrote:
>> What is it you are trying to accomplish?
>>
>> --nodeps is almost always the WRONG answer.
>>     
>
> Well, just starting my adventure in learning Linux. My immediate need is a spam gateway, and all the how-to's I find are for distributions I either don't want to use or are very old, not to mention just copying commands isn't an effective way to learn. I have decided to stick with CentOS and learn using it, that being said I have loosely decided on a few apps to use for this server: postfix, amavisd-new, clamav and spam assassin. I was hoping to setup a minimal install and start from there, which brought up an interesting scenario. When installing basically nothing except text internet, editors and base, I unchecked sendmail and noticed exim was automatically installed (even though it's not even an option)! Fortunately I am using esx and creating vm's and snapping them to test stuff makes learning very easy! I wonder if base is not even selected if any MTA is installed?
>
> Thanks for the pointer on --nodeps (I can see why that logically can be a problem).
>   

I think the underlying problem here is that you're using rpm rather than 
the yum package management system (which is what CentOS "wants").  
Installing/removing things willy nilly with rpm is going to get you into 
trouble unless you really know what you're doing (and you've indicated 
that you don't...hehe).

Removing sendwhale is as simple as "yum remove sendmail".  It will warn 
you if there are any dependencies and you can go from there.  I 
generally remove sendmail first thing and then do "yum install 
postfix".  Once postfix is installed you can season it to taste by 
visiting the config files in /etc/postfix.  There are numerous guides 
out there on how to configure postfix to filter spam and/or work with 
outside applications to do the deed.  You might want to start off by 
skimming through Johnny Hughes' instructions for installing various mail 
bits here:

http://www.hughesjr.com/content/category/4/15/29/

and then try reading through stuff like this:

http://www.howtoforge.com/linux_spam_filter_mail_gateway

Once you've gotten things up and working you can spend some "quality 
time" delving into the minutiae.  Personally, I like to avoid hand 
compiling anything these days (to the extent possible), as it really 
simplifies upgrades and potential conflicts down the road.  Between the 
base install and the extras repository, you should have most, if not 
all, of what you need to build a reasonably effective spam trap.

Good luck!





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