NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #1/NN_1993_1.iso/spool/comp/sys/3b1/4200

Internet Message Format | 1993-01-07 | 4.0 KB

Xref: sparky comp.sys.3b1:4200 comp.mail.misc:4281
Newsgroups: comp.sys.3b1,comp.mail.misc
Path: sparky!uunet!psinntp!monymsys!sonyd1.broadcast.sony.com!blilly.uucp!bruce
From: [e-mail] (Bruce Lilly)
Subject: Re: Sendmail problem on AT&T unix 7300 (3b1).
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Organization: Bruce Lilly
Date: Thu, 7 Jan 93 01:44:59 GMT
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Bruce Lilly)
Lines: 67

In article <[e-mail]>,
 posted to comp.sys.3b1,comp.mail.misc,
 [e-mail] (Bill Pfeiffer) wrote:
>
>Interesting thing is, that I DO NOT have a smail binary on the system!

$ ls -li /bin/cp /bin/ln
    71 -rwxr-xr-x   2 bin      bin          4812 Jan  1  1970 /bin/cp
    71 -rwxr-xr-x   2 bin      bin          4812 Jan  1  1970 /bin/ln
$

If you execute "rm -f /bin/cp" (and you have sufficient permission for it to
succeed), do you still have the "cp" program? Yes, you do; it's also called
"ln"-- if you then execute "/bin/ln /bin/ln /bin/cp" everything will be back
to normal.  Similarly, if you execute "mv /bin/cp /usr/lib/sendmail", you
haven't created sendmail.

Just because the authors of smail elected to call a link to their program by
the name "sendmail", doesn't make it become sendmail. It's still smail.
It's fine to aspire to greatness, but aspirations and reality aren't
necessarily the same.

>I DO have a /usr/spool/smail directory AND a /usr/lib/smail directory,
                        ^^^^^                          ^^^^^
These are dead giveaways that you have smail and not sendmail.

>but my binary is sendmail which lives in /usr/bin/sendmail.  In the

sendmail is usually installed as /usr/lib/sendmail or /usr/sbin/sendmail
(it's unlikely that you have a /usr/sbin on a 3B1, unless somebody made one;
it's not standard under SVR2.2). sendmail usually uses /usr/spool/mqueue
for queued mail files (/var/spool/mqueue recently). sendmail is also
usually linked to programs named newaliases and mailq (and possibly
others). sendmail requires a configuration file, usually located in
/etc/sendmail.cf (possibly /usr/lib/sendmail.cf for old versions).
If none of this sounds familiar, you almost certainly don't have sendmail.

The other dead giveaway was your reference to ``version 3.1''. It is
*extremely* unlikely that you have version 3.1 of sendmail, since a) it
would be horribly ancient, and b) it was probably never released outside of
UCB (the earliest one I've seen on a 3B1 was version 4.12). Current releases
of sendmail are 5.67 (production version) and 6.5 (now in alpha test (may
well be 6.6 or later by the time you read this)).

On the other hand there have been several versions of smail. smail 3 was
also known as smail 2.5. There is also a completely different smail 3.x
which is currently somewhere around 3.1.27.1 (no doubt several smail fans
which rush to provide different numbers). The latest version of smail, still
in development is, paradoxically, smail 2.7.  Don't try to make sense of any
of the version numbers in this paragraph; it could be hazardous to your
mental health.

Have you run what(1) on the program you have which purports to be sendmail?
Have you tried "sendmail -v -d0-99.1 -bt </dev/null"?

I still stand by my original advice: get the sendmail binary for the 3b1
which is available from the osu-cis or uunet archives (and other places) or
get the UIUC/IDA sendmail sources and compile them.  What you have now
(regardless of what it is called) is clearly not working satisfactorily for
you, else you would not have posted. It's time to junk it and put something
useful in its place (unless you enjoy the challenge of dealing with your
ongoing mail problems). Of course, you're free to do as you please, but you
asked for advice, and I've given mine, along with justification for my
position. Good luck to you, whatever you choose to do.

--
    Bruce Lilly        ...uupsi!monymsys!sonyd1!blilly!bruce