Web hosting solutions - Inside Linux Obtaining sendmail Most modern distributions of
Inside Linux Obtaining sendmail Most modern distributions of Linux include the sendmail package. Be sure to check your distribution media if sendmail is not installed. In a pinch, you can try the which command to see if the sendmail executable exists, as shown in the following dialog: stimpy $ which sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail stimpy $ The which command found the sendmail executable in the /usr/sbin directory. In contrast, the following dialog demonstrates the use of the which command to locate the sendmail executable. Since sendmail exists on this system, half the battle is getting the sendmail system up and running. Most of the work is in verifying the configuration files. stimpy $ which sendmail which: no sendmail in (/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin//root/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/ bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/bin:/usr/lib/java/bin:/var/lib/dosemu:/usr/games/bin:/usr/games:/ opt/gnome/bin:/opt/kde/bin:/usr/openwin/bin:/usr/lib/pgsql/bin:/opt/pilotsdk/bin) stimpy $ In this dialog, you can see that the which command could not find sendmail in the usual locations. This does not mean that sendmail does not exist on your system. You can perform an exhaustive search using the find command, as shown in the following dialog: stimpy $ find / -name sendmail -print /etc/permissions.d/sendmail /sbin/init.d/sendmail /usr/doc/packages/sendmail /usr/doc/susehilf/raw_whatis/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail /usr/lib/sendmail /usr/share/sendmail stimpy $ Checking the distributions of Linux on my system -Red Hat 6.1, SuSE 6.3, Slackware 7.0, and TurboLinux 6.0 -reveals the sendmail executable in the /usr/sbin directory. The one exception, Caldera 2.3, places the sendmail executable in the /usr/libexec/sendmail directory. If you do not have sendmail installed, and the package is not available on your distribution media, you can download the sendmail package from the ftp://ftp.sendmail.org FTP site. You will find the sendmail package available as a compressed tar file (*.Z) and a gzipped tar file (*.gz). It is recommended that you download the gzipped package, because it is smaller in size, thereby making the download quicker. Building the sendmail Package First of all, you need to unpack the source distribution. This is easily achieved using the tar command, as shown in the following dialog: stimpy $ tar -xzvf sendmail.x.x.x.tar.gz stimpy $ The x.x.x represents the version of sendmail you are using. The current version is 8.10.0, making the name of the file sendmail.8.10.0.tar.gz. A number of directories are created, and all required files are extracted and placed in their appropriate directory. As with any other package to be built, you should first examine the README file(s). In a nutshell, the process is as follows: 1. Read any relevant README files. They will point you to other files that are important. 2. Create any necessary site configuration build files, as noted in devtools/Site/README. 3. Execute the Build script found in the ./sendmail directory. 4. Change to the cf/cf directory, and use the cp command to create a new *.mc file from the generic platform.mc file provided. Finally, execute Build filename.cf. 5. Copy filename.cf to the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf directory. Finally, install the sendmail executable by executing Build install. page 162
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