Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2000 12:07:30 -0600 (CST) From: Christopher Farley <chris@northernbrewer.com> To: mpd6334@cs.rit.edu Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Postfix vs. Sendmail Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.21.0012021130480.24326-100000@kraeusen.nbrewer.com> In-Reply-To: <20001202091924.A65973@rit.edu>
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On Sat, 2 Dec 2000, Michael Dungan wrote: > For what it's worth, I have had this exact same problem for over > 6 months, but it never bothered me enough to write into the list. > NO_SENDMAIL=true has been uncommented in make.conf the whole time, > yet every time I re-make the the world, sendmail (whichever version > is included in the newly re-made world) clobbers postfix (even as > recently as about 10 days ago.) My only solace is the fact that I > can set up postfix in <10 minutes now, including compile time. I > guess practice made perfect. (using 4-STABLE the whole time) > has anyone had this problem and was actually able to fix it? > (again, NO_SENDMAIL=true ain't doing the job.) I think the concensus on this thread is that NO_SENDMAIL=true works fine. And, since Postfix (from the Ports Collection) installs in /usr/local/sbin, I don't think it should touch Postfix. However if you install Postfix (or the Postfix sendmail program) in any other location, particularly in /usr/sbin, this may be a problem. I think my hand-build MTA was destroyed by make world because I didn't understand how FreeBSD invokes sendmail. For example, the 'sendmail' in /usr/sbin is a symlink to /usr/sbin/mailwrapper. The same goes for /usr/bin/mailq and /usr/bin/newaliases. They both link to /usr/sbin/mailwrapper. mailwrapper consults /etc/mail/mailer.conf. By default, that file lists the sendmail, mailq and newaliases binaries installed with the system. Instead, you need to change them to point to the location of your Postfix (or qmail, or whatever) sendmail equivalents. My mail.conf looks like this: # Execute the "Postfix" sendmail program, named /usr/local/sbin/sendmail # sendmail /usr/local/sbin/sendmail send-mail /usr/local/sbin/sendmail mailq /usr/local/sbin/sendmail -bp newaliases /usr/local/sbin/sendmail -bi If you hand-compile and install some MTAs (including Postfix), they instruct you to modify the sendmail 'binary' in /usr/sbin. I *think* (but can not yet confirm) that 'make world' will restore the symlinks to mailwrapper, thus overwriting any custom sendmail program you may have installed in /usr/sbin. that this would occur even with 'NO_SENDMAIL=true' makes sense to me, because technically these symlinks always point to mailwrapper and not sendmail per se. I think that mailwrapper exists for one purpose: so that you don't need to modify anything in /usr, and so that Postfix/qmail/whatever can go in /usr/local. If this is the case, it sounds like a good idea, but it is a shame that only FreeBSD implements it, and it is not mentioned in any standard UNIX documentation, the Handbook, the Complete FreeBSD, etc. ---- Christopher Farley Northern Brewer / 1150 Grand Avenue / St. Paul, MN 55105 www.northernbrewer.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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