etcmailer.conf


/etc/mailer.conf

Traditionally, the only mail server program available for any UNIX was sendmail(8). As such, a huge amount of add-on software expects to find /usr/sbin/sendmail and expects it to behave in a certain manner. What's more, sendmail(8) behaved differently depending on what name it was called with. Some common alternate names are send-mail, mailq, and newaliases. Programs expected to find all of these names as well and expected that these commands would behave appropriately. Sendmail is such a standard that newer mail server programs have been forced to call themselves "sendmail," and to behave exactly as Sendmail does, just to maintain compatibility with this vast installed base. This causes problems when using a different mail program, as you may be stuck wondering exactly which mail program the "sendmail" command calls.

Also, OpenBSD includes classic Sendmail as part of the base system. When you upgrade, sendmail(8) is reinstalled. If you overwrote Sendmail with your preferred mail server, upgrades would cause no end of annoyance.

The /etc/mailer.conf file does an end-run around all this mess by eliminating /usr/sbin/sendmail as a mail program. Instead, "sendmail" is just a wrapper that checks /etc/mailer.conf and redirects the request to the mail-sending program indicated there. Entries in /etc/mailer.conf are just a list of program names, along with the path to the actual program to be called. Sendmail proper is actually installed as /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail, for example. To run an alternate mail server, just give the actual command name and the full path to all of the appropriate binaries. This happens automatically when you install a new MTA from a port or package.




Absolute Openbsd(c) Unix for the Practical Paranoid
Absolute OpenBSD: Unix for the Practical Paranoid
ISBN: 1886411999
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2005
Pages: 298

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