Sendmail: Theory and Practice, Second Edition
A comprehensive guide to the nooks and crannies of Sendmail, the most-popular electronic mail utility for those using Unix-based servers.
TABLE OF CONTENTS Sendmail: Theory and Practice, Second Edition
Chapter 9: Maintenance and Administration
In this chapter we explain the various duties and methods of mail administration. We will discuss how to analyze syslog information and what to look for, common problems, and different ways to fix the things that normally go wrong on a busy mail hub. We'll start with a tour of the "mechanics" behind Sendmail, and later, give you a brief smattering of hints, kinks, and secret handshakes.
9.1. The Files and Directories
Sendmail uses several files to help it do its work. We present and explain them here. Note that different systems keep their Sendmail-related files in different directories. If you don't find Sendmail's configuration files in /etc/mail, look for them in /usr/lib. If you don't find the sendmail binary itself in /usr/sbin, look for it in /usr/lib and /usr/etc. If you don't find the mail queue in /var/spool/mqueue, look in /usr/spool/mqueue or even /var/sendmail or /var/spool/sendmail. Vendors love to move this stuff around. Happy hunting.
sendmail
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The Sendmail executable program. Sendmail is usually executed at system start-up time out of one of the system start-up files (often /etc/rc.local). On older Berkeley-based systems (ULTRIX, for example) this is in /usr/lib, on OSF/1 systems it is in /usr/sbin, on BSD 4.3-Reno and later it is in /usr/libexec. You'll need to check your system management guide for your system's convention.
sendmail.cf
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The Sendmail configuration file. On some systems this is in /usr/lib. On others it is...
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