[gentoo-user] [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[gentoo-user] [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Mick]

Hi All,

Is there a (native) way to configure sendmail to send messages via a
secondary smtp account, if dor some reason the primary ISP smtp is
down, without some bespoke DIY script?
-- 
Regards,
Mick

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Harry Putnam]

Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> writes:

> Hi All,
>
> Is there a (native) way to configure sendmail to send messages via a
> secondary smtp account, if dor some reason the primary ISP smtp is
> down, without some bespoke DIY script?

Not give you the runaround, and there may well be some sendmail
experts here... but I think your question is more likely to get a
really helpful response if you put it on comp.mail.sendmail.

You might get an answer from Per Hedlund or one of the other heavy
hitters there.

I've used sendmail for yrs but just on homeboy little local lans.

I'd be surprised if there is not some well trod way to do what you are
asking.   Sendmail is probably the most widely used MTA around so it
seem really likely that problem has been dealt with in some way.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Mick]

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On Saturday 17 April 2010 00:51:39 Harry Putnam wrote:
> comp.mail.sendmail

Thank you Harry, I will.  Just thought that there may be a Gentoo user who's 
already tried this - plus this is my favorite list alright.  ;-) 
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Mick]

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On Saturday 17 April 2010 00:51:39 Harry Putnam wrote:
> Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> writes:
> > Hi All,
> >
> > Is there a (native) way to configure sendmail to send messages via a
> > secondary smtp account, if dor some reason the primary ISP smtp is
> > down, without some bespoke DIY script?
> 
> Not give you the runaround, and there may well be some sendmail
> experts here... but I think your question is more likely to get a
> really helpful response if you put it on comp.mail.sendmail.
> 
> You might get an answer from Per Hedlund or one of the other heavy
> hitters there.
> 
> I've used sendmail for yrs but just on homeboy little local lans.
> 
> I'd be surprised if there is not some well trod way to do what you are
> asking.   Sendmail is probably the most widely used MTA around so it
> seem really likely that problem has been dealt with in some way.

For the purpose of posterity:

The way to set up a fall back host is to use confFALLBACK_SMARTHOST to define 
a fall back smtp server.
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Harry Putnam]

Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> writes:

> For the purpose of posterity:
>
> The way to set up a fall back host is to use confFALLBACK_SMARTHOST to define 
> a fall back smtp server.

Thanks Mick... Instead of asking for help, you ended up giving help.

Did someone answer your question privately? 

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Mick]

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On Sunday 18 April 2010 16:14:50 Harry Putnam wrote:
> Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> writes:
> > For the purpose of posterity:
> >
> > The way to set up a fall back host is to use confFALLBACK_SMARTHOST to
> > define a fall back smtp server.
> 
> Thanks Mick... Instead of asking for help, you ended up giving help.
> 
> Did someone answer your question privately?

No, I spent sometime on IRC #sendmail where I was given help and was pointed 
to the manuals.  Of course I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail 
enough for my liking. :-p

Will need to read some more because there's things I can improve on my 
configuration (although it currently works as is).
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Peter Humphrey]

On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:

> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my liking.

Does anybody?

-- 
Rgds
Peter.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Tanstaafl]

On 2010-04-18 6:27 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:
> 
>> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my liking.
> 
> Does anybody?

<flame-protect>
That's why Wietse invented postfix.
</flame-protect>

-- 

Charles

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-04-19, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> On 2010-04-18 6:27 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
>> On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:
>> 
>>> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my liking.
>> 
>> Does anybody?
>
><flame-protect>
> That's why Wietse invented postfix.
></flame-protect>

I gave up on sendmail about 12 years ago and switched to qmail and/or
postfix.  I didn't know anybody was still using sendmail.  Is it the
default MTA for any of the popular Linux distros?

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I'm having a RELIGIOUS
                                  at               EXPERIENCE ... and I don't
                              gmail.com            take any DRUGS

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Mick]

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On Monday 19 April 2010 15:49:34 Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2010-04-19, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> > On 2010-04-18 6:27 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> >> On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:
> >>> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my liking.
> >>
> >> Does anybody?
> >
> ><flame-protect>
> > That's why Wietse invented postfix.
> ></flame-protect>
> 
> I gave up on sendmail about 12 years ago and switched to qmail and/or
> postfix.  I didn't know anybody was still using sendmail.  Is it the
> default MTA for any of the popular Linux distros?

I am not sure if it is a default MTA but I have a CentOS server which comes 
with it.  I guess it's one of these masochistic things that either decide to 
completely avoid learning (like emacs?!) or once you start you don't want to 
let it beat you!  :-))
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 19 April 2010 16:49:34 Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2010-04-19, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> > On 2010-04-18 6:27 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> >> On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:
> >>> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my liking.
> >> 
> >> Does anybody?
> >
> ><flame-protect>
> >
> > That's why Wietse invented postfix.
> >
> ></flame-protect>
> 
> I gave up on sendmail about 12 years ago and switched to qmail and/or
> postfix.  I didn't know anybody was still using sendmail.  Is it the
> default MTA for any of the popular Linux distros?

Yes. Centos/RedHat et al. The installer has a screen to let you choose, but if 
you click-click-click-Yes through it like most numbnuts will, sendmail is what 
you get.

How do I know this? Because I fought valiantly with one of them today.

I took me 90 minutes to figure out how to add a SmartHost. Vogon poetry is a 
delight compared to those damn .cf files. And the .mc's aren't much better.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Alan McKinnon]

On Monday 19 April 2010 21:07:47 Mick wrote:
> On Monday 19 April 2010 15:49:34 Grant Edwards wrote:
> > On 2010-04-19, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> > > On 2010-04-18 6:27 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > >> On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:
> > >>> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my
> > >>> liking.
> > >> 
> > >> Does anybody?
> > >
> > ><flame-protect>
> > >
> > > That's why Wietse invented postfix.
> > >
> > ></flame-protect>
> > 
> > I gave up on sendmail about 12 years ago and switched to qmail and/or
> > postfix.  I didn't know anybody was still using sendmail.  Is it the
> > default MTA for any of the popular Linux distros?
> 
> I am not sure if it is a default MTA but I have a CentOS server which comes
> with it.  I guess it's one of these masochistic things that either decide
> to completely avoid learning (like emacs?!) or once you start you don't
> want to let it beat you!  :-))

I recall this old quip:

You are not a real Unix sysadmin till you have written a sendmail.cf by hand.
You are insane to attempt it twice.

;-)


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-04-19, Mick <michaelkintzios@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday 19 April 2010 15:49:34 Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2010-04-19, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
>> > On 2010-04-18 6:27 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
>> >> On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:
>> >>> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my liking.
>> >>
>> >> Does anybody?
>> >
>> ><flame-protect>
>> > That's why Wietse invented postfix.
>> ></flame-protect>
>> 
>> I gave up on sendmail about 12 years ago and switched to qmail and/or
>> postfix.  I didn't know anybody was still using sendmail.  Is it the
>> default MTA for any of the popular Linux distros?
>
> I am not sure if it is a default MTA but I have a CentOS server which
> comes with it.

Yikes.  That seems a bit cruel.

> I guess it's one of these masochistic things that either decide to 
> completely avoid learning (like emacs?!) or once you start you don't
> want to let it beat you!  :-))

Ah, yes.  I have golf for that.  20 years and no real improvement, but
maybe next week...

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I was making donuts
                                  at               and now I'm on a bus!
                              gmail.com            

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-04-19, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday 19 April 2010 16:49:34 Grant Edwards wrote:
>> On 2010-04-19, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
>> > On 2010-04-18 6:27 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
>> >> On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:
>> >>> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my liking.
>> >> 
>> >> Does anybody?
>> >
>> ><flame-protect>
>> >
>> > That's why Wietse invented postfix.
>> >
>> ></flame-protect>
>> 
>> I gave up on sendmail about 12 years ago and switched to qmail and/or
>> postfix.  I didn't know anybody was still using sendmail.  Is it the
>> default MTA for any of the popular Linux distros?
>
> Yes. Centos/RedHat et al. The installer has a screen to let you
> choose, but if you click-click-click-Yes through it like most
> numbnuts will, sendmail is what you get.

And yet the "geekier" distros like Debian and Gentoo gave up on
sendmail years ago.  You can install sendmail in either, but people
don't seem to.

> How do I know this? Because I fought valiantly with one of them
> today.
>
> I took me 90 minutes to figure out how to add a SmartHost. Vogon
> poetry is a delight compared to those damn .cf files. And the .mc's
> aren't much better.

There's a reason why the chapter on Mail in the Unix Hater's Handbook
has the quote:

       Not having sendmail is like not having VD.
                                                         Ron Heiby
                                    Former moderator, comp.newprod

The UHH "Mail" chapter is mostly about sendmail:

   Sendmail was built while the Internet mail handling systems were in
   flux. As a result, it had to be programmable so that it could
   handle any possible changes in the standards. Delve into the
   mysteries of sendmail's unreadable sendmail.cf files and
   you'll discover ways of rewiring sendmail's insides so that
   @#$@$^%<<<@#) at @$%#^! is a valid e-mail address. That was great
   in 1985. In 1994, the Internet mail standards have been decided
   upon and such flexibility is no longer needed. Nevertheless, all of
   sendmail's rope is still there, ready to make a hangman's knot,
   should anyone have a sudden urge.

I particularly like the list of reasons why the Sendmail book has a
bat on the cover:

 * The common North American brown bat's diet is composed principally
   of bugs. Sendmail is a software package which is composed
   principally of bugs.
   
 * Sendmail and bats both suck.
 
 * Sendmail maintainers and bats both tend to be nocturnal creatures,
   making "eep eep" noises which are incomprehensible to the average
   person.
  
 * Have you ever watched a bat fly? Have you ever watched Sendmail
   process a queue full of undelivered mail? QED.
  
 * Sendmail and bats both die quickly when kept in captivity.
 
 * Bat guano is a good source of potassium nitrate, a principal
   ingredient in things that blow up in your face. Like Sendmail.
   
 * Both bats and sendmail are held in low esteem by the general
   public.

 * Bats require magical rituals involving crosses and garlic to get
   them to do what you want.  Sendmail likewise requires mystical
   incantations such as:

      R<$+>$*$=Y$~A$*     $:<$1>$2$3?$4$5   Mark user portion.
      R<$+>$*!$+,$*?$+    <$1>$2!$3!$4?$5   is inferior to @
      R<$+>$+,$*?$+       <$1>$2:$3?$4      Change src rte to % path
      R<$+>:$+            <$1>,$2           Change % to @ for immed. domain
      R<$=X$-.UUCP>!?$+   $@<$1$2.UUCP>!$3  Return UUCP
      R<$=X$->!?$+        $@<$1$2>!$3       Return unqualified
      R<$+>$+?$+          <$1>$2$3          Remove '?'
      R<$+.$+>$=Y$+       $@<$1.$2>,$4      Change do user@domain

 * Farmers consider bats their friends because of the insects they
   eat. Farmers consider Sendmail their friend because it gets more
   collegeeducated people interested in subsistence farming as a
   career.

Note that this was written in the early 1990s.  Sendmail has been
considered archaic and overly complex for almost 20 years.
   
-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! My mind is making
                                  at               ashtrays in Dayton ...
                              gmail.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Mick]

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On Monday 19 April 2010 20:19:16 Alan McKinnon wrote:
> On Monday 19 April 2010 16:49:34 Grant Edwards wrote:
> > On 2010-04-19, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> > > On 2010-04-18 6:27 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > >> On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:
> > >>> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my
> > >>> liking.
> > >>
> > >> Does anybody?
> > >
> > ><flame-protect>
> > >
> > > That's why Wietse invented postfix.
> > >
> > ></flame-protect>
> >
> > I gave up on sendmail about 12 years ago and switched to qmail and/or
> > postfix.  I didn't know anybody was still using sendmail.  Is it the
> > default MTA for any of the popular Linux distros?
> 
> Yes. Centos/RedHat et al. The installer has a screen to let you choose, but
>  if you click-click-click-Yes through it like most numbnuts will, sendmail
>  is what you get.
> 
> How do I know this? Because I fought valiantly with one of them today.
> 
> I took me 90 minutes to figure out how to add a SmartHost. 

Ha, ha!  You should have asked in this M/L!  ;-)

> Vogon poetry is
>  a delight compared to those damn .cf files. And the .mc's aren't much
>  better.


.cf files are strictly for hackers, well, <aheam> I meant sendmail hackers.  
;-) 

The problem is that you'll spend an hour or two setting it all up, it'll work, 
you'll never touch it again.  Then, two years later something will require you 
to reconfigure it and there will be no way on this earth that you will 
remember what you did or why it made any sense at the time!  Ha, ha!  :-))
-- 
Regards,
Mick

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Mick]

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On Monday 19 April 2010 20:20:27 you wrote:
> On Monday 19 April 2010 21:07:47 Mick wrote:
> > On Monday 19 April 2010 15:49:34 Grant Edwards wrote:
> > > On 2010-04-19, Tanstaafl <tanstaafl@libertytrek.org> wrote:
> > > > On 2010-04-18 6:27 PM, Peter Humphrey wrote:
> > > >> On Sunday 18 April 2010 22:06:44 Mick wrote:
> > > >>> I was reminded that I do not understand sendmail enough for my
> > > >>> liking.
> > > >>
> > > >> Does anybody?
> > > >
> > > ><flame-protect>
> > > >
> > > > That's why Wietse invented postfix.
> > > >
> > > ></flame-protect>
> > >
> > > I gave up on sendmail about 12 years ago and switched to qmail and/or
> > > postfix.  I didn't know anybody was still using sendmail.  Is it the
> > > default MTA for any of the popular Linux distros?
> >
> > I am not sure if it is a default MTA but I have a CentOS server which
> > comes with it.  I guess it's one of these masochistic things that either
> > decide to completely avoid learning (like emacs?!) or once you start you
> > don't want to let it beat you!  :-))
> 
> I recall this old quip:
> 
> You are not a real Unix sysadmin till you have written a sendmail.cf by
>  hand. You are insane to attempt it twice.
> 
> ;-)


He, he!  I thought it went along the lines of:

"He who has never hacked sendmail.cf has no soul;
 he who has hacked sendmail.cf more than once has no brain."
 - Old Hacker Proverb

-- 
Regards,
Mick

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[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Harry Putnam]

I think you all are missing something... sendmail is better documented
than any of the other pretenders.

Now understand, that I am easily the dullest knife in the drawer on
this list even though by unix/linux standards I'm fairly long in the
tooth having started my computing skills in 1996 and broke in on
redhat at that time (using sendmail).  I'm sad to say, I'm still a
noob in a vast number of areas.

I've used sendmail all that time.  If I can figure out how to use
it.... It really must not be that hard.  At least not hard to find
piles of help on google.

Admittedly though my usage has always been just a homeboy home lan
administrator so closest I ever come to using sendmail anything like
what its target usage base is, would be a home lan mailhub.

Unless, I'm terribly misinformed, sendmail is still the most commonly
used mta in the unix world of servers.

At least according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendmail

Qmail home page says it is the second most common MTA but doesn't say
who is first.... its sendmail... I'm pretty sure.

About all the snipes concerning hacking sendmail.cf... I'm sure you
are all aware that any hacking needs to happen in sendmail.mc... then
let m4 sort out sendmail.cf.

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-04-20, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:

> About all the snipes concerning hacking sendmail.cf... I'm sure you
> are all aware that any hacking needs to happen in sendmail.mc... then
> let m4 sort out sendmail.cf.

IOW, sendmail has a configuration file so incomprehensible that the
configuration file needs a configuration file.

QED

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Do you guys know we
                                  at               just passed thru a BLACK
                              gmail.com            HOLE in space?

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Harry Putnam]

Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> writes:

> On 2010-04-20, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:
>
>> About all the snipes concerning hacking sendmail.cf... I'm sure you
>> are all aware that any hacking needs to happen in sendmail.mc... then
>> let m4 sort out sendmail.cf.
>
> IOW, sendmail has a configuration file so incomprehensible that the
> configuration file needs a configuration file.

Internet mail is quite complex, yes.

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-04-20, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:
> Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> writes:
>
>> On 2010-04-20, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:
>>
>>> About all the snipes concerning hacking sendmail.cf... I'm sure you
>>> are all aware that any hacking needs to happen in sendmail.mc... then
>>> let m4 sort out sendmail.cf.
>>
>> IOW, sendmail has a configuration file so incomprehensible that the
>> configuration file needs a configuration file.
>
> Internet mail is quite complex, yes.

Yet all of the other popular MTAs seem to have human-readable
configuration files and don't need a meta-configuration-file/language
to generate their configuration files.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! Where does it go when
                                  at               you flush?
                              gmail.com            

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Stroller]

On 20 Apr 2010, at 14:53, Harry Putnam wrote:

> I think you all are missing something... sendmail is better documented
> than any of the other pretenders.
> ...
> Unless, I'm terribly misinformed, sendmail is still the most commonly
> used mta in the unix world of servers.

I would be surprised if it is better documented or more widely used  
than Postfix.

(Although I have to admit I find Postfix documentation difficult, IMO  
his is because it's so flexible & powerful).

Stroller.
  

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Stroller]

On 19 Apr 2010, at 22:50, Mick wrote:
> ...
> The problem is that you'll spend an hour or two setting it all up,  
> it'll work,
> you'll never touch it again.  Then, two years later something will  
> require you
> to reconfigure it and there will be no way on this earth that you will
> remember what you did or why it made any sense at the time!  Ha,  
> ha!  :-))

To be fair, is this not mostly the case with the majority of big,  
powerful servers on *nix platforms?

I have certainly found this to be the case with Apache, Postfix and to  
a lesser extend Samba. Oh! Also syslog-ng's filtering options. The  
only text-based configuration file I've found easy to recreate has  
been that of Dovecot.

Stroller.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 20 April 2010 15:53:01 Harry Putnam wrote:
> I think you all are missing something... sendmail is better documented
> than any of the other pretenders.

One has to understand what the various MTAs out there were built to do, and 
what their "feature list" is:

sendmail comes from ancient days. It was written to be able to route almost 
any kind of mail using almost any kind of addressing scheme to and from almost 
any kind of network. So it is quite happy receiving SMTP mail from the 
internet and routing it to a FidoNet address. To do this, it has to reread 
it's routing table with every message, therefore .cf was designed to be 
machine efficient but still use only ASCII characters. Which led to m4 being 
developed to make it easier, and I've even seen more simple apps that are 
front ends to m4. After a while you start asking "Wow, is this complexity 
actually needed?"

Postfix was designed to remove the sendmail complexity from a sysadmin's life 
while still being somewhat familiar. It's claim to fame is the ability to pump 
enormous amounts of mail down a pipe and keep the routing rules simple. I have 
two Postfix relays, both of them can deal with 3 million mails a day without 
breaking a sweat. Let me put that in perspective, it's about 30 mails a 
second, every second. Postfix is so good at this, I can run them as VMWare 
virtual machine.

exim doesn't fare quite as well as Postfix in the raw throughput department, 
but it is very very good at giving the sysadmin efficient filtering/routing 
rules.

qmail is, how shall I put this? Something that Dan wrote? Dan likes to find 
fault in the detail with almost all software and likes to perform experiments 
to prove himself right. He also likes to do all of this his own way with the 
result that his stuff is a square peg and you have a round hole. Most 
sysadmins I know consider the pain of using qmail to not offset the benefit of 
using qmail, therefore they don't use it.

> Now understand, that I am easily the dullest knife in the drawer on
> this list even though by unix/linux standards I'm fairly long in the
> tooth having started my computing skills in 1996 and broke in on
> redhat at that time (using sendmail).  I'm sad to say, I'm still a
> noob in a vast number of areas.
> 
> I've used sendmail all that time.  If I can figure out how to use
> it.... It really must not be that hard.  At least not hard to find
> piles of help on google.

Postfix's web site has an enormous amount of documentation on everything 
related to Postfix.

> Admittedly though my usage has always been just a homeboy home lan
> administrator so closest I ever come to using sendmail anything like
> what its target usage base is, would be a home lan mailhub.
> 
> Unless, I'm terribly misinformed, sendmail is still the most commonly
> used mta in the unix world of servers.

Yes, you are misinformed. My logs show very little mail being received from 
sendmail MTAs. There may well be large numbers of ancient sendmail installs 
out there, but they do not account for a large fraction of the mail being 
sent. That trophy belongs to Windows zombie bots....

> At least according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendmail
> 
> Qmail home page says it is the second most common MTA but doesn't say
> who is first.... its sendmail... I'm pretty sure.
> 
> About all the snipes concerning hacking sendmail.cf... I'm sure you
> are all aware that any hacking needs to happen in sendmail.mc... then
> let m4 sort out sendmail.cf.

Even a cursory glance at sendmail shows that it was designed in a time with a 
different mindset and different needs to what we do these days. Sendmail will 
never escape this legacy because it is what it is and that is it's purpose.

It's not as bad as buggy whips, but the same principle is at work.

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Alan McKinnon]

On Tuesday 20 April 2010 17:51:12 Harry Putnam wrote:
> Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com> writes:
> > On 2010-04-20, Harry Putnam <reader@newsguy.com> wrote:
> >> About all the snipes concerning hacking sendmail.cf... I'm sure you
> >> are all aware that any hacking needs to happen in sendmail.mc... then
> >> let m4 sort out sendmail.cf.
> > 
> > IOW, sendmail has a configuration file so incomprehensible that the
> > configuration file needs a configuration file.
> 
> Internet mail is quite complex, yes.

This statement is the source of the confusion surrounding sendmail.

Internet mail is not complex, it is stunningly simple:

mail comes in,
look up where it should go,
send it there

In between you might hand the message off to virus and spam scanners, you 
might look up an ACL before accepting it coming in, but those are all 
additives to find valid mail. Remove the additives, and you get the amazingly 
simple lookup table scheme described above.

There isn't even an inherent difference between relays and final destination 
MTAs, they still send the mail somewhere. The difference is in the viewpoint 
of the sysadmin.


-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-04-21, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tuesday 20 April 2010 15:53:01 Harry Putnam wrote:
>> I think you all are missing something... sendmail is better documented
>> than any of the other pretenders.
>
> One has to understand what the various MTAs out there were built to do, and 
> what their "feature list" is:
>
> sendmail comes from ancient days. It was written to be able to route almost 
> any kind of mail using almost any kind of addressing scheme to and from almost 
> any kind of network.

Very true.  And since nobody (that I know of) needs that capability
any longer, asking modern Linux users to continue to pay for that
capability everytime they try to tweak the MTA configuration seems a
tad silly.

> So it is quite happy receiving SMTP mail from the internet and
> routing it to a FidoNet address. To do this, it has to reread it's
> routing table with every message, therefore .cf was designed to be 
> machine efficient but still use only ASCII characters. Which led to
> m4 being developed

Sendmail didn't lead to m4 being developed.  m4 was developed by K&R
in the mid 70's.  Sendmail didn't happen until the early 80's. 
According to Wikipedia, sendmail first shipped with BSD 4.1c in 1983.

Unless in this context, m4 doesn't refer to the m4 macro processor and
associated language?  I always thought that the m4 used to encrypt
sendmail configurations was the standard Unix m4 that was developed
for Ratfor in the 70's.  Wikipedia seems to confirm that, saying that
"The implementation of Rational Fortran used m4 as its macro engine
from the beginning", but Wikipedia also says that m4 was developed in
77 and Ratfor in 74.  Both were developed by K&R, so I suppose it
could be that m4 was used by Ratfor for a couple years before m4 went
public as a seperate program.

> Even a cursory glance at sendmail shows that it was designed in a
> time with a different mindset and different needs to what we do these
> days. Sendmail will never escape this legacy because it is what it is
> and that is it's purpose.
>
> It's not as bad as buggy whips, but the same principle is at work.

The UHH chapter on sendmail has some great examples of sendmail
address parsing/transformation run amok.

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! My polyvinyl cowboy
                                  at               wallet was made in Hong
                              gmail.com            Kong by Montgomery Clift!

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Harry Putnam]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> writes:

> On Tuesday 20 April 2010 15:53:01 Harry Putnam wrote:
>> I think you all are missing something... sendmail is better documented
>> than any of the other pretenders.
>
> One has to understand what the various MTAs out there were built to do, and 
> what their "feature list" is:
>
> sendmail comes from ancient days. It was written to be able to route almost 

As ancient as 2007, at least one survey shows sendmail as still the
most popular.

One fairly recent survey sited on wikipedia shows sendmail as losing ground
but still the most popular MTA.. at 29% of the surveyed market.  Down
from some 42% in 2001/3

That's a lot of `buggy whips'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sendmail

[...]

  In 2001, approximately 42% of the publicly-reachable mail-servers on
  the Internet ran Sendmail.[1] More recent surveys have suggested a
  decline, with 29.4% of mail servers in August 2007 detected as
  running Sendmail in a study performed by E-Soft, Inc.[2] Sendmail is
  trailed by Microsoft Exchange Server, Exim, and Postfix; these four
  being the only mail servers with more than 10% of the total.

[...]

[gentoo-user] Re: [OT] Setting up a fall back ISP SMTP in sendmail

[Harry Putnam]

Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> writes:

>> Internet mail is quite complex, yes.

> This statement is the source of the confusion surrounding sendmail.

> Internet mail is not complex, it is stunningly simple:

> mail comes in,
> look up where it should go,
> send it there

[...]

Egad, I had no idea it was so simple; maybe you should tell all those
guys who collaborate in writing  piles of rfcs that pertain to
internet mail and related issues, I bet they don't know it so easy
either.  :)