Installation of Sendmail
Before building Sendmail, create
the required user, group and directory with the following commands
issued as the root user:
groupadd -g 26 smmsp &&
useradd -c "Sendmail Daemon" -g smmsp -d /dev/null \
-s /bin/false -u 26 smmsp &&
chmod -v 1777 /var/mail &&
install -v -m700 -d /var/spool/mqueue
Note: See the source tree
sendmail/README file for information
on linking optional packages into the build. Use the example below,
which adds support for tcpwrappers, SASL, StartTLS (OpenSSL) and OpenLDAP, as a starting point. Of course,
modify it to suit your particular needs.
cat >> devtools/Site/site.config.m4 << "EOF"
APPENDDEF(`confENVDEF',`-DSTARTTLS -DTCPWRAPPERS -DSASL -DLDAPMAP')
APPENDDEF(`confLIBS', `-lssl -lcrypto -lwrap -lsasl2 -lldap -llber')
APPENDDEF(`confINCDIRS', `-I/usr/include/sasl')
EOF
Install Sendmail with the
following commands:
cat >> devtools/Site/site.config.m4 << "EOF"
define(`confMANGRP',`root')
define(`confMANOWN',`root')
define(`confSBINGRP',`root')
define(`confUBINGRP',`root')
define(`confUBINOWN',`root')
EOF
cd sendmail &&
sh Build &&
cd ../cf/cf &&
cp generic-linux.mc sendmail.mc &&
sh Build sendmail.cf
This package does not come with a test suite.
Now, as the root user:
install -v -d -m755 /etc/mail &&
sh Build install-cf &&
cd ../.. &&
sh Build install &&
install -v -m644 cf/cf/{submit,sendmail}.mc /etc/mail &&
cp -v -R cf/* /etc/mail &&
install -v -m755 -d /usr/share/doc/sendmail-8.14.1/{cf,sendmail} &&
install -v -m644 \
CACerts FAQ KNOWNBUGS LICENSE PGPKEYS README RELEASE_NOTES \
/usr/share/doc/sendmail-8.14.1 &&
install -v -m644 sendmail/{README,SECURITY,TRACEFLAGS,TUNING} \
/usr/share/doc/sendmail-8.14.1/sendmail &&
install -v -m644 cf/README /usr/share/doc/sendmail-8.14.1/cf &&
for manpage in sendmail editmap mailstats makemap praliases smrsh
do
install -v -m444 $manpage/$manpage.8 /usr/share/man/man8
done &&
install -v -m444 sendmail/aliases.5 /usr/share/man/man5 &&
install -v -m444 sendmail/mailq.1 /usr/share/man/man1 &&
install -v -m444 sendmail/newaliases.1 /usr/share/man/man1 &&
install -v -m444 vacation/vacation.1 /usr/share/man/man1
Install the Sendmail Installation
and Operations Guide with the following commands:
cd doc/op &&
sed -i 's/groff/GROFF_NO_SGR=1 groff/' Makefile &&
make op.txt op.pdf
Now, as the root user:
install -v -d -m755 /usr/share/doc/sendmail-8.14.1 &&
install -v -m644 op.ps op.txt op.pdf /usr/share/doc/sendmail-8.14.1 &&
cd ../..
Note: remove op.pdf from the make and install commands if you don't
have Ghostscript installed.
Command Explanations
cat > devtools/Site/site.config.m4
<< "EOF": This creates a configuration file
changing some of the default settings.
sh Build; sh Build sendmail.cf; sh
Build install-cf; sh Build install: Sendmail uses an m4 based build script to create the various
Makefiles. These commands build and
install the package.
for manpage in...;do...;done; install
...: The man pages are installed already formatted
and man displays them
somewhat garbled. These commands replace the formatted pages with
pages man can display
properly.
Configuring Sendmail
Configuration Information
Create the /etc/mail/local-host-names and /etc/mail/aliases files using the following
commands as the root user:
echo $(hostname) > /etc/mail/local-host-names
cat > /etc/mail/aliases << "EOF"
postmaster: root
MAILER-DAEMON: root
EOF
newaliases -v
Sendmail's primary configuration
file, /etc/mail/sendmail.cf, is
complex and not meant to be directly edited. The recommended
method for changing it is to modify /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and various m4 files, then run the m4 macro processor from within
/etc/mail as follows:
m4 m4/cf.m4 sendmail.mc > sendmail.cf
A full explanation of the files to modify, and the available
parameters can be found in /etc/mail/README.
Boot Script
To automate the running of Sendmail at startup, install the
/etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail init
script included in the blfs-bootscripts-20080816 package.
make install-sendmail
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
The -qNm option to sendmail, where N is number
of minutes, controls how often Sendmail will process the mail queue. A
default of 5 minutes is used in the init script. Individual
workstation users may want to set this as low as 1 minute,
large installations handling more mail may want to set it
higher.