[Mailman-Developers] sendmail

[Ron Jarrell]

At 11:26 PM 8/12/01 -0700, Chuq Von Rospach wrote:
>On 8/3/01 6:46 PM, "Ron Jarrell" <jarrell@vt.edu> wrote:
>
>> 
>> Ok, if anyone else running sendmail would like to test this a bit,
>> I'd appreciate it.  You need to be running at least 8.11 I believe.
>> (And if you're running 8.11, you ought to be at 8.11.4)
>
>Okay, I've had a chance to test this, and tweak it a bit. Sorry for the
>delay in responding -- I moved ISPs this last week, and the dust is just
>settling.
>
>I did this a little differently, since I know that tweaking sendmail.cf
>files gives many people hives, and so people aren't likely to do it. It's
>also unneccesary.
>
>You can do this without modifying your sendmail files at all. Instead, in
>your startup script, add:
>
>        /usr/sbin/sendmail -bd -ODeliveryMode=defer \
>                -ODaemonPortOptions=Name=MSA,Port=NNNN,M=E,Addr=127.0.0.1
>
>Where NNNN is some port number not otherwise used (you can test if
>something's in use by doing "telnet localhost NNNN" -- if it's refused,
>there's no daemon listening)
>
>This sets up a sendmail process listening to the alternate port, in DEFER
>mode, but set to talk only to the localhost interface, so it's not
>accessible by anyoneother than your local machine: no open relay problems.
>
>To make mailman access that port, add this to your mm_cfg.py:
>
># define alternate SMTP port
>SMTPPORT = 1313
>
>
>I've been running this fine for about a week, and I'm quite comfortable with
>it. It works with sendmail 8.10 and later and doesn't require a sendmail god
>to implement. Ready for the FAQ, I'd say.

Well, if you go with this model, it needs to be mentioned that by operating in
defer mode you're guaranteeing that outbound mail will be batched up, and
not processed any faster than your queue running process is set to, which
needs to be mentioned in the faq.  My method, while requiring a change to the
m4 file (which, granted, not everyone tweaks, although they really should)
allows you to continue running in "realtime".  There are no weird changes
required unless you want to implement auto-aliasing, at which point you have
to either blindly follow directions, or be at least a Junior Guru...