fred smith wrote:
> On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 07:44:37AM -0500, Robert Nichols wrote:
>> On 05/16/2010 12:01 AM, Robert Nichols wrote:
>>> On 05/15/2010 11:23 PM, fred smith wrote:
>>>> a couple hours after the update (and requisite reboot and reinstallation
>>>> of nvidia proprietary driver), I noticed I wasn't gettting any email.
>>>> upon a little investigation, I noted that the update had replaced my
>>>> custom sendmail.cf with its own. I don't recall updates to sendmail
>>>> doing that previously,....
>>> Sounds like you installed a sendmail.cf that was not generated from
>>> /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and left the original sendmail.mc unmodified.
>>> The rpm updated the unmodified sendmail.mc configuration file. The
>>> startup script for sendmail then saw an apparently out-of-date
>>> sendmail.mc and rebuilt it from the new sendmail.cf.
>> Got the file names reversed in that last sentence. Sorry. Should
>> read:
>>
>> "The startup script for sendmail then saw an apparently out-of-date
>> sendmail.cf and rebuilt it from the new sendmail.mc."
>
> thanks for the clarification.
>
> that's odd (unless my memory is going--a real possibility).
>
> I've got "fcshome.mc" and "fcshome.cf", the latter made from the former,
> and then copied to sendmail.cf. I've done it that way for over a decade.
> that way my custom .mc never gets clobbered by a new one from the RPM
> package being installed.
>
> nevertheless, your suggestion sounds reasonable. I think I'll try making
> a copy of fcshome.mc as sendmail.mc then see if the right thing happens
> next time sendmail gets an update. that way, if sendmail.mc gets stepped
> on it won't affect my customized one and I can always fall back to the
> manual way of doing things.
This is probably a matter of the timestamps on sendmail.cf vs sendmail.mc which
until now have coincidentally been right. If you had not modified your
sendmail.mc, an updated version in an rpm would overwrite it. Then the makefile
that runs at sendmail startup would notice that your sendmail.cf was outdated
and helpfully build you a new one. All expected behaviour. If your custom
version had been named sendmail.mc, the new version would probably have been
renamed as sendmail.mc.rpmnew instead of overwriting it.
--
Les Mikesell
lesmikesell at gmail.com