Chapter 27

What's New With Mail Services (Reference)

Chapter 24, Mail Services (Overview) provides an introduction to the components of mail services and a description of a typical mail configuration. Chapter 25, Mail Services (Tasks) explains how to set up and administer an electronic mail system with standard configuration files. Chapter 26, Mail Services (Reference) describes in greater detail the components of mail services. Chapter 26, Mail Services (Reference) also describes the mail service programs and files, the mail routing process, and the interactions of sendmail with name services. This chapter describes the new features that are included in version 8.12 of sendmail, the version that is in this Solaris 9 release. You can also read about changes to mail.local, mailstats, and makemap. This chapter also describes a new maintenance utility, editmap. The following list can help you in your search on a specific topic.

• "Changes to sendmail"

• "Changes to mail.local"

• "Changes to mailstats"

• "Changes to makemap"

• "New Command, editmap"

• "Other Changes and Features of Interest"

For details that are not covered in this chapter, see the man pages for sendmail(1M), mail.local(1M), mailstats(1), makemap(1M), and editmap(1M).

Changes to sendmail

This section contains information on the following topics.

• "New Configuration File, submit.cf"

• "New or Deprecated Command-Line Options"

• "New and Revised Configuration File Options and Related Topics"

• "New Defined Macros for sendmail"

• "New and Revised m4 Configuration Macros for sendmail"

• "New Delivery Agent Flags"

• "New Equates for Delivery Agents"

• "New Queue Features"

• "Changes for LDAP in sendmail"

• "New Built-in Mailer Feature"

• "New Rule Sets"

• "Changes to Files"

• "IPv6 Addresses in Configuration"

New Configuration File, submit.cf

Version 8.12 of sendmail includes an additional configuration file, /etc/mail/submit.cf. This new file, submit.cf, is used to run sendmail in mail submission program mode instead of daemon mode. Mail submission program mode, unlike daemon mode, does not require root privilege, so this new paradigm provides better security.

See the following list of functions for submit.cf:

• sendmail uses submit.cf to run in mail submission program (MSP) mode, which submits email messages and can be invoked by programs (such as mailx), as well as by users. Refer to the description of the -Ac option and the -Am option in "New or Deprecated Command-Line Options".

• submit.cf is used in the following operating modes:

  • -bm, which is the default operating mode

  • -bs, which uses standard input to run SMTP

  • -bt, which is the test mode that is used to resolve addresses

• sendmail, when using submit.cf, does not run as an SMTP daemon.

• sendmail, when using submit.cf, uses /var/spool/clientmqueue, the client-only mail queue, which holds messages that were not delivered to the sendmail daemon. Messages in the client-only queue are delivered by the client "daemon," which is really acting as a client queue runner.

• By default, sendmail uses submit.cf periodically to run the MSP queue (otherwise, known as the client-only queue), /var/spool/clientmqueue.

  /usr/lib/sendmail -Ac -q15m

Note the following:

• submit.cf is provided automatically when you install or upgrade to the Solaris 9 operating environment.

• submit.cf requires no planning or preliminary procedures prior to the installation of the Solaris 9 operating environment.

• Unless you specify a configuration file, sendmail automatically uses submit.cf as required. Basically, sendmail knows which tasks are appropriate for submit.cf and which tasks are appropriate for sendmail.cf.

• submit.cf is not to be modified.