Les Mikesell wrote: > Mikkel L. Ellertson wrote: >> You keep talking about "muddling >> through" the sendmail.mc file to make it listen to outside >> connections. Please explain what is so hard to understand about >> this, that people are going to get it wrong? > > Please name one other RH/fedora package where you have to do anything > like this to make a program do what it was designed to do? Please > describe the standard locations for documentation where you got a > pointer to the needed change in sendmail.mc? Man sendmail? Man > sendmail-cf? This isn't something you'll find in any external sendmail > documentation because no one writing about sendmail in general would > consider the possibility that it might be shipped that way. > Well, first you have to know that sendmail is your mail program. But I guess you could get that from reading the mail man page. The sendmail man pages talks about the /etc/mail directory, so looking at the files in there is a good idea. Looking at sendmail.mc gives you all the information. But looking at a general sendmail website will also tell you about /etc/mail, and about .mc files. In ether case, if you are bright enough to poor sand out of a boot, you should find sendmail.mc and take a look at it. If you can not find it, then you probably should not be configuring Sendmail in the first place. As for other packages where you have to do things like this, how many other packages are there that are as complex as Sendmail? Well, the Bind package, compiling your own kernel come to mind. Don't blame RH/Fedora because Sendmail is so complicated. Now, if you were you want to blame them for making such a complicated package the default mail server, you would probably find people that would agree with you. I guess Sendmail as a mail server is just so much of a tradition that it is still the default. For years, it was all anybody ran as a mail server. >> If you want sample configurations of different mail server >> configurations that can be modified for local conditions, > > I want ones that don't need to be modified unless you already know your > local conditions are non-standard. > First you have to define what are standard local conditions. Good luck with that. Standard for a stand-alone desktop. For a desktop on a local network? For a database server? For a mail server on a personal DSL or Cable modem connection? Standard for a small office mail server? I guess you could make a standard configuration for a AT&T DSL connection using the sbcglobal servers. (Though you still need to configure the user name and password so you can relay through their servers.) I have a nice config file in my archives for using a Tolosity DSL connection, but that probably isn't going to do much good. The change from that to DirectDSL was not too big. The thing you are missing is that for most Fedora users, standard conditions do not include an incoming SMTP connection from the Internet, and including using a relay host for outgoing mail. Most are configuring their mail client to get and send mail directly to/from one of more outside servers. So for "standard conditions", the config file being shipped works without modification. So it looks like your conditions are non-standard. The problem is that you do not know it. RH/Fedora is going to have a hard time fixing that. I know I am tired of trying, so I will leave you to rant in peace. :) Mikkel -- Registered Linux User #16148 (http://counter.li.org/)
