This section contains information related to 'transport agents', which means the underlying software that connects your local system to remote systems.
Smail3.1 seems to be a de-facto standard transport agent for uucp-only sites and for some smtp sites. It compiles without patching from the sources. In addition, smail is provided in binary form in the SLS distribution of Linux.
The newspak distribution contains config files for smail3.1.28 under Linux that you can use to start with.
If you're building smail from sources, you need to have the following in your os/linux file so that 'sed' gives you shell scripts that work properly.
CASE_NO_NEWLINES=true
For a uucp-only system that has a MX-record and that wants a domainized header (who goes through a smart-host for everything), these are the entire config files you'll need:
#-------- /usr/local/lib/smail/config -----------------
#
# domains we belong to
visible_domain=subdomain.domain:uucp
#
# who we're known as (fully-qualified-site-name)
visible_name=myhostname.subdomain.domain
#
# who we go through
smart_path=my_uucp_neighbor
#
#---------- /usr/local/lib/smail/paths --------------
#
# we're a domainized site, make sure we accept mail to both names
myhostname %s
myhostname.subdomain.domain %s
#
#-------------------------------------------------------------------
To run smail as a smtp daemon, add the following to /etc/inetd.conf:
smtp stream tcp nowait root /usr/bin/smtpd smtpd
Outgoing mail gets sent automatically, when using elm. If your internet link
is down when you send mail, then the mail sits in "/usr/spool/smail/input".
When the link next comes up, "runq" is run which causes the mail to be sent.
I run a ppp and uucp site and generally use sendmail5.67b+IDA1.5 instead of
smail3.1.28 due to the incredible ease of use. There is a binary distribution
in sunsite.unc.edu:pub/Linux/system/Mail/delivery. To install it:
Another nice thing is that if you have mail.debug set and you run syslogd, your incoming and outgoing mail messages will get logged. See the /etc/syslog.conf file for details.
The sources for sendmail+IDA may be found at vixen.cso.uiuc.edu. They require no patching to run under Linux if you're running something like a kernel of 1.00.
If you're running a current kernel of around 1.1.50 or later, you get the fun of reversing most of the Linux-specific patches that are now in the vanilla sources. It's extremely obvious where this needs to be done. Just type make and when it blows up, go to that line in the sources and comment out the Linux-specific code that's in there.
Sometime after things settle down, I'll send the 'unpatches' to the sendmail+IDA authors and ask'em to remove the now unnecessary patches.
If you're going to run sendmail+IDA, I strongly recommend you go to the sendmail5.67b+IDA1.5 version since all required Linux-specific patches are now in the vanilla sources and several security holes have been plugged that WERE (!!!) in the older version you may have grabbed or built before about December 1st, 1993.
The May/June 1994 edition of Linux Journal has an extensive article
on the care and feeding of sendmail+IDA. The new edition of the Linux DOC
Project Networking Administrator's Guide has an even more
detailed and complete version.
Sendmail+IDA requires you to set up a sendmail.m4 file rather than
editing the sendmail.cffile directly. The nice thing about this is
that it is simple to set up mail configurations that are extremely difficult
(if not totally impossible for most people to set up correctly) in smail or
traditional sendmail.
The sendmail.m4 file that corresponds to the above smail example looks like the following:
dnl #------------------ SAMPLE SENDMAIL.M4 FILE ------------------ dnl # dnl # (the string 'dnl' is the m4 equivalent of commenting out a line) dnl # dnl # you generally don't want to override LIBDIR from the compiled in paths dnl #define(LIBDIR,/usr/local/lib/mail)dnl # where all support files go define(LOCAL_MAILER_DEF, mailers.linux)dnl # mailer for local delivery define(POSTMASTERBOUNCE)dnl # postmaster gets bounces define(PSEUDODOMAINS, BITNET UUCP)dnl # don't try DNS on these dnl # dnl #------------------------------------------------------------- dnl # dnl # names we're known by define(PSEUDONYMS, myhostname.subdomain.domain myhostname.UUCP) dnl # dnl # our primary name define(HOSTNAME, myhostname.subdomain.domain) dnl # dnl # our uucp name define(UUCPNAME, myhostname)dnl dnl # dnl #------------------------------------------------------------- dnl # define(UUCPNODES, |uuname|sort|uniq)dnl # our uucp neighbors define(BANGIMPLIESUUCP)dnl # make certain that uucp define(BANGONLYUUCP)dnl # mail is treated correctly define(RELAY_HOST, my_uucp_neighbor)dnl # our smart relay host define(RELAY_MAILER, UUCP-A)dnl # we reach moria via uucp dnl # dnl #-------------------------------------------------------------------- dnl # dnl # the various dbm lookup tables dnl # define(ALIASES, LIBDIR/aliases)dnl # system aliases define(DOMAINTABLE, LIBDIR/domaintable)dnl # domainize hosts define(PATHTABLE, LIBDIR/pathtable)dnl # paths database define(GENERICFROM, LIBDIR/generics)dnl # generic from addresses define(MAILERTABLE, LIBDIR/mailertable)dnl # mailers per host or domain define(UUCPXTABLE, LIBDIR/uucpxtable)dnl # paths to hosts we feed define(UUCPRELAYS, LIBDIR/uucprelays)dnl # short-circuit paths dnl # dnl #-------------------------------------------------------------------- dnl # dnl # include the 'real' code that makes it all work dnl # (provided with the source code) dnl # include(Sendmail.mc)dnl # REQUIRED ENTRY !!! dnl # dnl #------------ END OF SAMPLE SENDMAIL.M4 FILE -------
Unlike most Unix distributions, Linux does not come with a local mail delivery
agent by default. I recommend using the commonly available deliver
program, which is an optional package in a number of the usual Linux
distributions. In order to do so, you need to define a
LOCAL_MAILER_DEF in the sendmail.m4 file that points to a
file that looks like:
# -- /usr/local/lib/mail/mailers.linux -- # (local mailers for use on Linux ) Mlocal, P=/usr/bin/deliver, F=SlsmFDMP, S=10, R=25/10, A=deliver $u Mprog, P=/bin/sh, F=lsDFMeuP, S=10, R=10, A=sh -c $u
There is a also built-in default for deliver in the
Sendmail.mc file that gets included into the sendmail.cf
file. To specify it, you would not use the mailers.linux file but
would instead define the following in your sendmail.m4 file:
dnl --- (in sendmail.m4) --- define(LOCAL_MAILER_DEF, DELIVER)dnl # mailer for local delivery
Unfortunately, Sendmail.mc assumes deliver is installed in /bin, which is not the case with Slackware1.1.1 (which installs it in /usr/bin). In that case you'd need to either fake it with a link or rebuild deliver from sources so that it resides in /bin.
Setting up special behavior for sites or domains is done through a number
of optional dbm tables rather than editing the sendmail.cf file
directly. Refer to the July-1994 issue of Linux Journal, to the docs
in the sources, or to the sendmail chapter in the newest version of the Linux
DOC Project Networking Administration Guide which will be available
real-soon-now for more details.
When not using any of the optional dbm tables, sendmail+IDA delivers mail via
the RELAY_HOST and RELAY_MAILER) defined in the sendmail.m4
file used to generate sendmail.cf. It is easily possible to override this
behavior through entries in the domaintable or uucpxtable.
A generic site that is on Internet and speaks Domain Name Service, or one that
is UUCP-only and forwards all mail via UUCP through a smart
RELAY_HOST, probably does not need any specific table entries at all.
Virtually all systems should set the DEFAULT_HOST and
PSEUDONYMS macros, which define the canonical site name and aliases
it is known by. If all you have is a relay host
and relay mailer, you don't need to set these defaults since it works
automagically.
UUCP hosts will probably also need to set UUCPNAME to their official
UUCP name. They will also probably set RELAY_MAILER, and
RELAY_HOST which enable smart-host routing through a mail relay. The
mail transport to be used is defined in RELAY_MAILER and should
usually be UUCP-A for UUCP sites.
If your site is SMTP-only and talks `Domain Name Service', you would change
the RELAY_MAILER.
If you're a SLIP site, you might want to take the easy way out and just forward all outgoing mail to your service provider to do the right thing with. To do so, you'd want to define ISOLATED_DOMAINS and VALIDATION_DOMAINS to be your domain, you'd also want to define RELAY_HOST to be your service provider and RELAY_MAILER to be TCP. Of course, you want to ask permission before you set any system up as your general purpose relay.
Sendmail 8.7.x from Berkeley is the latest major revision after sendmail5. It has wonderful built-in support for building under Linux. Just "make linux" and you'll be all set. You'll probably be best served by grabbing one of the various binary distributions off of the usual Linux archive sites rather than fighting things like Berkeley dbm yourself.
There's a nice distribution of sendmail 8.6.12 from Jason Haar - j.haar@lazerjem.demon.co.uk on sunsite.unc.edu in /pub/Linux/system/Mail/delivery/sendmail-8.6.12-bin.tgz that has the source documentation and a very nice quickie description of how to run sendmail v8 for common configurations.
Bottom line with sendmail v8 is that you want to configure the bare minimum necessary to get the job done. The following is an example that should get you close at least.
Much like sendmail+IDA, sendmail v8 uses m4 to process a config file into a full sendmail.cf that sendmail uses. The following is my current mc file for my site (ppp to Internet for outgoing mail, uucp for incoming mail).
dnl divert(-1)
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
#
# this is the .mc file for a linux host that's set up as follows:
#
# - connected to Internet for outbound mail (ppp here)
# - connected via UUCP for incoming mail
# - domainized headers
# - no local mailer (use 'deliver' instead)
# - no DNS running so don't canonicalize outgoing via DNS
# - all non-local outbound mail goes to the RELAY_HOST over smtp
# (we run ppp and let our service provider do the work)
#
# vds 3/31/95
#
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
include(`../m4/cf.m4')
VERSIONID(`linux nodns relays to slip service provider smarthost')dnl
Cwmyhostname.myprimary.domain myhostname.UUCP localhost
OSTYPE(linux)
FEATURE(nodns)dnl
FEATURE(always_add_domain)dnl
FEATURE(redirect)
FEATURE(nocanonify)
dnl MAILER(local)dnl
MAILER(smtp)dnl
MAILER(uucp)dnl
define(`RELAY_HOST', smtp:my.relay.host.domain)
define(`SMART_HOST', smtp:my.relay.host.domain)
define(`UUCP_RELAY', smtp:my.relay.host.domain)
define(`LOCAL_MAILER_PATH', `/bin/deliver')
define(`LOCAL_MAILER_ARGS', `deliver $u')
There are a few differences I suppose to the 'IDA bigots' among us. So far, I've found the following.
The following also are known to run under Linux. Consult "archie" for details regarding how to find them...
Unlike most operating systems, Linux does not have mail "built-in". You'll need a program to deliver the local mail. One good program is Rich Braun's "lmail" program, but I've switched to using the more commonly available "deliver" program.
Documentation for how to use either for local delivery is in the sendmail5.67b+IDA1.5 binary release (on sunsite) mentioned above.