home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
DP Tool Club 15
/
CD_ASCQ_15_070894.iso
/
vrac
/
how_to.zip
/
EMAIL.HOW
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-04-29
|
17KB
|
447 lines
Archive-name: linux/howto/mail
Last-modified: 19 Apr 94
The Linux Electronic Mail HOWTO
Vince Skahan, <vince@victrola.wa.com>
v1.5, Last modified 26 March 1994
This document describes the setup and care+feeding of Electronic Mail
(e-mail) under Linux. You need to read this if you plan to communicate
locally or to remote sites via electronic mail. You probably do *not*
need to read this document if don't exchange electronic mail with
other users on your system or with other sites.
1. Introduction
The intent of this document is to answer some of the questions and
comments that appear to meet the definition of 'frequently asked
questions' about e-mail software under Linux.
This document and the corresponding UUCP and News 'HOWTO' documents
collectively supersede the UUCP-NEWS-MAIL-FAQ that has previously been
posted to comp.os.linux.announce.
1.1. New versions of this document
New versions of this document will be periodically posted to
comp.os.linux.announce, comp.answers, and news.answers. They will
also be added to the various anonymous ftp sites who archive such
information including sunsite.unc.edu:/pub/Linux/docs/HOWTO.
1.2. Feedback
I am interested in any feedback, positive or negative, regarding the
content of this document via e-mail. Definitely contact me if you
find errors or obvious omissions.
I read, but do not necessarily respond to, all e-mail I receive.
Requests for enhancements will be considered and acted upon based on
that day's combination of available time, merit of the request, and
daily blood pressure :-)
Flames will quietly go to /dev/null so don't bother.
Feedback concerning the actual format of the document should go to the
HOWTO coordinator - Matt Welsh (mdw@sunsite.unc.edu).
1.3. Copyright Information
The Mail-HOWTO is copyrighted (c)1994 Vince Skahan.
A verbatim copy may be reproduced or distributed in any medium
physical or electronic without permission of the author. Translations
are similarly permitted without express permission if it includes a
notice on who translated it.
Short quotes may be used without prior consent by the author.
Derivative work and partial distributions of the Mail-HOWTO must be
accompanied with either a verbatim copy of this file or a pointer to
the verbatim copy.
Commercial redistribution is allowed and encouraged; however, the
author would like to be notified of any such distributions.
In short, we wish to promote dissemination of this information through
as many channels as possible. However, we do wish to retain copyright
on the HOWTO documents, and would like to be notified of any plans to
redistribute the HOWTOs.
We further want that ALL information provided in the HOWTOS is
disseminated. If you have questions, please contact Matt Welsh, the
Linux HOWTO coordinator, at mdw@sunsite.unc.edu, or +1 607 256 7372.
1.4. Standard Disclaimer
Of course, I disavow any potential liability for the contents of this
document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this
document is entirely at your own risk.
1.5. Other sources of information
1.5.1. LINUX HOWTO Documents:
There is plenty of exceptional material provided in the other Linux
HOWTO documents and from the Linux DOC project. In particular, you
might want to take a look at the following:
o the serial communications HOWTO
o the ethernet HOWTO
o the Linux Networking Guide
1.5.2. USENET:
comp.mail.elm the ELM mail system.
comp.mail.mh The Rand Message Handling system.
comp.mail.mime Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions.
comp.mail.misc General discussions about computer mail.
comp.mail.multi-media Multimedia Mail.
comp.mail.mush The Mail User's Shell (MUSH).
comp.mail.sendmail the BSD sendmail agent.
comp.mail.uucp Mail in the uucp environment.
1.5.3. Mailing Lists:
There is a smail-3.1 mailing list. To join (or get off) the list,
send mail to
smail3-users-request@cs.athabascau.ca
Make sure that you include the address at which you want to receive
mail in the text of the message. To send a message to the list, send
it to
smail3-users@cs.athabascau.ca.
1.5.4. Books
The following is a non-inclusive set of books that will help...
o "Managing UUCP and USENET" from O'Reilly and Associates is in my
opinion the best book out there for figuring out the programs and
protocols involved in being a USENET site.
o "Unix Communications" from The Waite Group contains a nice
description of all the pieces (and more) and how they fit together.
o "Sendmail" from O'Reilly and Associates looks to like the
definitive reference on sendmail-v8 and sendmail+IDA. It's a "must
have" for anybody hoping to make sense out of sendmail without
bleeding in the process.
o "The Internet Complete Reference" from Osborne is a fine reference
book that explains the various services available on Internet and
is a great "one-stop-shopping" source for information on news,
mail, and various other Internet resources.
1.6. Where *NOT* to look for help
There is nothing "special" about configuring and running mail under
Linux (any more). Accordingly, you almost certainly do *NOT* want to
be posting generic mail-related questions to the comp.os.linux.*
newsgroups.
Unless your posting is truly Linux-specific (ie, "please tell me what
routers are already compiled into the SLS1.03 version of smail3.1.28")
you should be asking your questions in one of the newsgroups or
mailing lists referenced above.
Let me repeat that.
There is virtually no reason to post anything mail-related in the
comp.os.linux hierarchy any more. There are existing newsgroups in
the comp.mail.* hierarchy to handle *ALL* your questions.
IF YOU POST TO COMP.OS.LINUX.* FOR NON-LINUX-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS, YOU
ARE LOOKING IN THE WRONG PLACE FOR HELP. THE ELECTRONIC MAIL EXPERTS
HANG OUT IN THE PLACES INDICATED ABOVE AND GENERALLY DO NOT RUN LINUX.
POSTING TO THE LINUX HIERARCHY FOR NON-LINUX-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS WASTES
YOUR TIME AND EVERYBODY ELSE'S...AND IT FREQUENTLY DELAYS YOU FROM
GETTING THE ANSWER TO YOUR QUESTION.
2. Hardware Requirements
There are no specific hardware requirements for mail under Linux.
You'll need some sort of 'transport' software to connect to remote
systems, which means either tcp-ip or uucp. This could mean that you
need a modem or ethernet card (depending on your setup).
3. Getting the software
In general, I grab my sources from ftp.uu.net and the other fine
archive sites on Internet. In addition, Linux-specific binary ports
are found in the usual Linux distrbutions and on the usual Linux
anonymous ftp sites (sunsite.unc.edu and tsx-11.mit.edu in
particular).
The newspak-2.1.tar.z distribution contains config files and readme
files related to building uucp, news, and mail software under Linux
from the various freely-available sources. It can usually be found on
sunsite.unc.edu in the directory /pub/Linux/system/Mail.
4. Mail 'Transport Agents'
This section contains information related to 'transport agents', which
means the underlying software that connects your local system to
remote systems.
4.1. Smail v3.1
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
CASE_NO_NEWLINES=true in your os/linux file so that 'sed' gives you
shell scripts that work properly.
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:
o replace 'subdomain.domain' with your domain name
o replace 'myhostname' with you un-domainized hostname
o replace 'my_uucp_neighbor' with the uucp name of your upstream site
#-------- /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.
4.2. Sendmail+IDA
I run a uucp-only site and use sendmail5.65b+IDA1.5 instead of
smail3.1.28 due to the incredible ease of use. There is a binary
distribution on sunsite.unc.edu in pub/Linux/system/Mail
To install it...
o you'll probably want to remove (or rename) all the files from smail
(see the /install/installed directory if you are SLS) to be safe.
o cd to / then "gunzip -c sendmail5.65b+IDA1.5.tpz | tar xvf -" If
you have a "modern" tar from a recent Slackware (for example) you
can probably just do a "tar -zxvf filename.tgz" and get the same
results.
o cd to /usr/local/lib/mail/CF and copy the sample.m4 local.m4 file
to "yourhostname.m4". Edit out the distributed hostname, aliases,
and smarthost and put in the correct one for your site. The
default file is for a uucp-only site who has domainized headers and
who talks to a smart host. Then "make yourhostname.cf" and move
the resulting file to /etc/sendmail.cf
o if you are uucp-only, you do *NOT* need to create any of the tables
mentioned in the README.linux file. You'll just have to touch the
files so that the Makefile works. Just edit the .m4 file, make
sendmail.cf, and start testing it.
o if you're uucp-only and you talk to sites in addition to your
"smart-host", you'll need to add uucpxtable entries for each (or
mail to them will also go through the smart host) and run dbm
against the revised uucpxtable.
o if you use my sendmail5.67b+IDA1.5 distribution you should not use
a "freeze file".
o If you run Rich Braun's original binary distribution of 5.67a,
you'll need to freeze the configuration if you change your .cf file
with "/usr/lib/sendmail -bz" to make the changes take effect. You
should also update your version to at least 5.67b since there is a
nasty security hole in 5.67a and earlier.
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 uxc.cso.uiuc.edu. They
require no patching to run under Linux.
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.
4.3. Sendmail 8.6
Sendmail 8.6.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.
4.4. Other "transport agents"
The following also are known to run under Linux. Consult "archie" for
details regarding how to find them...
o smail2.5 - very simple UUCP-based smail
4.5. Local Delivery Agents
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.
5. Mail "User Agents"
This section contains information related to "user agents", which
means the software the user sees and uses. This software relies on
the "transport agents" mentioned above.
5.1. Elm
Elm compiles, installs, and runs flawlessly under Linux. For more
information, see the elm sources and installation instructions.
The only thing to know is that Elm's Configure script incorrectly sets
the "ranlib" variable in config.sh. When Configure gives you the
chance to edit config.sh before proceeding, please do so and set
"ranlib='ranlib'" or the binaries will compile but not link. The Elm
Development Team has been informed of this little problem, so please
don't bother them with it (again).
Elm and filter need to be mode 2755 (group mail) with /usr/spool/mail
mode 775 and group mail.
If you use a binary distribution, you'll need to create a
/usr/local/lib/elm/elm.rc file to override the compiled-in hostname
and domain information:
o replace "subdomain.domain" with your domain name replace
o "myhostname" with you un-domainized hostname replace
o "my_uucp_neighbor" with the uucp name of your upstream site
#---------- /usr/local/lib/elm/elm.rc ------------------
#
# this is the unqualified hostname
hostname = myhostname
#
# this is the local domain
hostdomain = subdomain.domain
#
# this is the fully qualified hostname
hostfullname = myhostname.subdomain.domain
#
#--------------------------------------------------------
One thing you want to be aware of is that if you have Elm compiled to
be MIME-able, you need metamail installed and in your path or Elm will
not be able to read MIME mail you've received. Metamail is available
on thumper.bellcore.com and of course via "archie".
5.2. Mailx
There is a fine binary implementation of mailx located on the various
Linux archive sites. Make sure you grab version 5.3b or later since
there are security problems in v5.3a.
The only potential problem I'm aware of is that it seems to be
compiled in a way that requires /usr/lib/smail rather than
/usr/lib/sendmail as a transport agent. You probably need a link if
you run sendmail on your system.
I strongly recommend removing the old "edmail" stuff from SLS1.00 and
replacing it with mailx.
5.3. Other user agents
The following also are known to run under Linux. Consult "archie" for
details regarding how to find them...
o Pine - from the Univ. of Washington
o Metamail - allows MIME support
o mh - yet another way to handle mail
o deliver - file/process mail based on rules
o procmail - file/process mail based on rules
o Majordomo - manages e-mail lists
o Mserv - provide files-by-mail
6. Acknowledgements
The following people have helped in the assembly of the information
(and experience) that helped make this document possible:
Steve Robbins, Ian Kluft, Rich Braun, Ian Jackson, Syd Weinstein, Ralf
Sauther, Martin White, Matt Welsh, Ralph Sims, Phil Hughes
If I forgot anybody, my apologies...