Sendmail Configuration on Solaris

This document details how to configure sendmail on Solaris systems

Solaris 8

Sendmail must be configured by editing the m4 marco file and building a new /etc/mail/sendmail.cf from the m4 macro. It solves a number problems that you would face if you tried to modifiy the sendmail.cf directly.

1. To build the macro you need to :-

# cd /usr/lib/mail/cf

2. Create a macro file for your configuration by copying the main.mc or subsidiary.mc to <hostname>.mc (Usually on BCC the subsidiary.mc should be used).

3. Main.mc assumes that you are directly connected to the internet and your machine can directly open a tcp connect to all other mail servers on theinternet (i.e. mail.sun.com, mail.ibm.com). It also assume that dns is correctly working.

4. Subsidiary.mc is the configuration mc file that should be used if you intend for sendmail to pass all outgoing mail to a mailserver (e.g to BCCHUB. This file smarthost line will need to be configured with the correct smarthost (i.e whatever the name or ip address of the machine where you want email to be sent to for that mail server to be responsable for delivery). For example:

5. The “define(`SMART_HOST', `mailhost$?m.$m$.')” could be changed to read “define(`SMART_HOST', `bcchub.birmingham.gov.uk')”

6. To find out what feature and defines that you can configure in these mc file a full readme is provided /usr/lib/mail/README.

7. To make the cf from the mc file you need to :-

# rm /usr/lib/mail/cf/hostname.cf ( if there )
# /usr/ccs/bin/make hostname.cf

8. Then you will need to copy of the cf file into place :-

# cp /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.old
# cp /usr/lib/mail/cf/hostname.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
# /etc/init.d/sendmail stop; /etc/init.d/sendmail start

Solaris 9 and 10

This part of the document details how to configure sendmail on solaris 9 and 10 to work with the BCC DNS setup.

Special setup is required because the BCC DNS does not resolve external addresses and does not return an appropriate response if it cannot resolve the address itself.

1. Prepare /etc/mail

cd /etc/mail
mkdir old
cp *.cf ./old/
ln –s subsidiary.cf sendmail.cf

2.Prepare /usr/lib/mail/cf

cd /usr/lib/mail
mv cf cf.orig
mkdir cf
chown root:mail cf
chmod 755 cf
cp –p cf.orig/Makefile cf

3. Prepare Logging

Touch /var/adm/mail.err
Touch /var/adm/mail
cp –p /etc/syslog.conf syslog.conf.the_date.your_initials

4. Edit /etc/syslog.conf and add the following lines (after the “# syslog configuration file.” comment line). Note that if the two colums are not, separated by tab chars syslogd will not start correctly. Pasting these lines will often separate the colums by spaces

#### START OF SENDMAIL LOGGING ENTRIES ####
mail.notice                                       /var/adm/mail
mail.err                                           /var/adm/mail.err
#### START OF SENDMAIL LOGGING ENTRIES ####

5. Restart syslogd

/etc/init.d/syslog stop
/etc/init.d/syslog start

6. Verify that logging is working

logger -p mail.notice “test using notice priority”
logger -p mail.crit “test using critical priority”

7. A successful test should produce the following results:

tail /var/adm/mail       lists both messages
tail /var/adm/mail.err  lists only critcal message

8. If these results are not obtained, the syslog entry lines are probably separated by space characters rather than tab characters.

9. Install sendmail configuration files

10. cd to /usr/lib/mail/cf, then copy and paste the following files from appendix A

submit.mc
subsidiary.mc

11. If possible, FTP the files from a working server (e.g b0004dpc) as cut/paste versions of the files may not build correctly and sendmail will complain about missing records when started.

12. Customise subsidiary.mc. To do this edit subsidiary.mc and locate the lines:

dnl These three lines below setup maskorading

FEATURE(`masquerade_entire_domain')
MASQUERADE_AS(`birmingham.gov.uk')
FEATURE(`masquerade_envelope')

13. If masquerading is not required, delete these lines. If masquerading is required, then update the following line with the domain from which email should appear to originate:

MASQUERADE_AS(`birmingham.gov.uk')

14. Build a new configuration and restart sendmail:

cd /usr/lib/mail/cf
make
cp *.cf /etc/mail
/etc/init.d/sendmail stop
/etc/init.d/sendmail start

15. No error messages should be printed and no error messages should be seen in /var/adm/mail

Appendix A

Submit.mc

divert(-1)
#
# Copyright D.M.K.Inman and ITNET PLC
#
# sendmail.mc (for sendmail 8.11 or higher)
#
# This Configuration will:
#    Not carry out DNS lookups
#    Accept mail from the localhost only
#    Deliver Local
#    Forward non-local email to a smarthost
#    Sender Address Masquerading is enabled
#
# This file must be paired up with its corresponding
# subsidiary.mc

divert(0)dnl
VERSIONID(`$Id: submit.mc      1.10 (ITNET) 23/12/2004')
define(`confCF_VERSION', `Submit')dnl
define(`__OSTYPE__',`')dnl dirty hack to keep proto.m4 from complaining
define(`_USE_DECNET_SYNTAX_', `1')dnl support DECnet
define(`confTIME_ZONE', `USE_TZ')dnl

dnl The next two lines suppress dns lookups on the sender and
dnl recipient domains
define(`confDONT_INIT_GROUPS', `True')dnl
define(`confDIRECT_SUBMISSION_MODIFIERS',`CC f')

dnl If you use IPv6 only, change [127.0.0.1] to [IPv6:::1]
FEATURE(`msp', `[127.0.0.1]')dnl

subsidiary.mc

divert(-1)
#
# Copyright D.M.K.Inman and ITNET PLC
#
# sendmail.mc (for sendmail 8.11 or higher)
#
# This Configuration will:
#
#    Accept mail from the localhost only
#    Deliver Local
#    Forward non-local email to a smarthost
#    Sender Address Masquerading is enabled
#
# This file must be paired up with its corresponding
# submit.mc

divert(0)dnl
VERSIONID(`@(#)subsidiary.mc    1.10 (ITNET) 23/12/2004')
OSTYPE(`solaris8')dnl
DOMAIN(`solaris-generic')dnl

dnl The three lines below bind the sendmail daemons to localhost
dnl as a result, with a few exceptions, only local applications
dnl will be able to send mail via the sendmail application.
dnl if a local application tries to send mail via a non 127.0.0.1
dnl local address, it will fail. The preferred solution is to update
dnl the local application to send mail to localhost

FEATURE(`no_default_msa')
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Name=MTA,Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1')
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Name=MSA,Port=submission,Addr=127.0.0.1')

dnl The line configures sendmail to smart relay all email to
dnl a mail hub 'mailhost' mx record lookups are repressed by
dnl the []. mailhost should be in the /etc/hosts file

define(`SMART_HOST', `relay:[mailhost]')dnl

dnl The line below suppresses DNS lookups
FEATURE(`nocanonify')dnl

dnl These three lines below setup masquerading

FEATURE(`masquerade_entire_domain')
MASQUERADE_AS(`birmingham.gov.uk')
FEATURE(`masquerade_envelope')

MAILER(`local')dnl
MAILER(`smtp')dnl

dnl This line is required by the smarthost definition above
dnl LOCAL_NET_CONFIG
dnl Note $*    $#esmtp must bet separated by a tab
R$* < @ $* .$m. > $*    $#esmtp $@ $2.$m $: $1 < @ $2.$m. > $3