Comments

9 responses to “how to re-enable sendmail for mail receipt under solaris 11 / nevada”

1. 2007/01/30

   H (Squeak)

   arghh!!!

   I logged in to read your blog and saw me facing ME! With shorter hair! ARGGHHHH!!!!

   Reply
2. 2007/01/30

   Mads

   re: arghh!!!

   Why make sendmail listen on the external port 25 if you’re not planning to receive mail on the box? Not to mention that there’s been several security issues with sendmail since the Sol10 release and some of them taking much too long to fix. Personally I’d be much in favor of using postfix rather than sendmail, but either way, I still favor not setting hosts up to be mail servers unless there’s a need to do so.

   Reply
3. 2007/01/30

   alecm

   re: arghh!!!

   >Why make sendmail listen on the external port 25 if you’re not planning to receive mail on the box?

   Um…. because I am and *do* receive e-mail on the box? 🙂

   Most of the time I also suspect Postfix would be a better option than local sendmail, yes.

   Reply
4. 2007/01/30

   Stephen Usher

   re: arghh!!!

   I must say that I’m now a convert to Exim. I’d far prefer that as a sendmail replacement.

   As for makeing sendmail listen on only localhost, that’s OK by default. The problem is that the whole svc system just makes things even more obscure and cryptic than ever. Maybe it is cooler and neater and technically wonderful but it’s a darn sight harder to manage and, like most “clever” software it can make stupid decisions and can cause bigger problems when it gets in the way.

   Case in point, I found a bug in the /lib/svc/method/fs-root and fs-usr scripts which is triggered if /etc/vfstab has an unterminated line at its end. Basically, the scripts don’t sanity check the return value from a shell function and want to mount /usr but mount can’t find it in the vfstab. Now, the svc system dumps you into a shell prompt (after asking for a password) but it gives you no idea what happened other than giving an incorrect error message. It’s VERY difficult to recover from this position. (No, you can’t boot single-user.) This has been logged by Sun as a low priority update which may or may not get into the mainline tree sometime in the future (even though I sent full diffs for a fix).

   At least they’ve fixed the bug where the only route out of a minorly corrupt svc database was rebuilding the system or hacking the database by hand after booting from a live CD.

   I do hope they’ve made the svc stuff working better in Solaris 11. (Oh and don’t get me started on the mess things get into when you do an upgrade install, even between sub-releases of Solaris 10.)

   Sun’s software quality’s gone down the tubes in the last five years or so.

   Sorry Alec, this has turned into a bit of a rant. It’s so frustrating seeing a system which used to be pretty well bullet-proof go to pot with such poor QA.

   Reply
5. 2007/02/01

   Dave Walker

   re: how to re-enable sendmail for mail receipt under solaris 11 / nevada

   The same little dance applies to Solaris 10 11/06, which is the first production release to incorporate the Secure By Default stuff in Nevada.

   Reply
6. 2007/04/30

   usao

   How to disable sendmail from port 25

   I need to disable sendmail from listening on port 25 because I have another program already on port 25 listening. However, I still need to send email from the box to the internet. I have not figured out how to make this work… I either get sendmail down, my program receives good but I cannot send, or I startup sendmail, which takes over port 25 from my program, but I can send mail.. I need to have it both ways… My program on port 25 and sendmail somewhere else but still sending emails…

   Reply
7. 2007/04/30

   usao

   How to disable sendmail from port 25

   I need to disable sendmail from listening on port 25 because I have another program already on port 25 listening. However, I still need to send email from the box to the internet. I have not figured out how to make this work… I either get sendmail down, my program receives good but I cannot send, or I startup sendmail, which takes over port 25 from my program, but I can send mail.. I need to have it both ways… My program on port 25 and sendmail somewhere else but still sending emails…

   Reply
8. 2007/09/14

   Eric Kimminau

   1. cd /etc/mail/cf/cf
   2. cp sendmail.mc sendmail.mc.org
   3. Re-write sendmail.mc (below)
   4. /usr/ccs/bin/make sendmail.cf
   5. cp sendmail.cf ../../sendmail.cf
   6. svccadm -v refresh
   7. mailx -s “testing” My.Internet@account.domain

   Reply
9. 2011/10/24

   Maz

   This is awesome! I patched my server from S10U5 to S10U9 and it all broke. This server was acting as the relay server. Once I applied this it worked. Why would they change this on a patch? I hate the upgrade process, it changes stuff whereas the whole point of an upgrade is to keep current setting. Anyway, thanks very much

   Reply