What's New With sendmail

Version 8.9.3 of sendmail has been included with the Solaris 8 release. Here is a list of the important or user-visible changes that are included in this new version:

• A new configuration file option, called MaxHeadersLength, limits the length of the sum of all header lines in a given message. The default value is 32768 bytes. Incoming messages with headers that exceed this value are rejected.

• A new file called /etc/default/sendmail can be used to store options to start sendmail with, rather than adding these options to the init script. The file makes it easier to upgrade systems, since the init scripts do not need to change.

• The mail.local program has been extended to use the Local Mail Transfer Protocol. The protocol allows error codes to be returned for each recipient, so that the message is resent to just the recipients that did not receive the message rather than having to re-queue the message to all of the recipients. This protocol was added to sendmail in the Solaris 7 release.

• A new command, named /usr/bin/praliases, can be used to turn the data in the alias database into plain text. If an argument is included on the command line, the command prints out a key:value pair, if the argument matches a key.

• A new program called smrsh can be used to limit the number of commands that can be run using the "|program" syntax of sendmail. Only programs included in /var/adm/sm.bin can be run if this feature is enabled. Adding FEATURE(`smrsh') in the main configuration file enables this feature (see /usr/lib/mail/README for details.)

• New options have been added to the vacation program: -f can be used to select an alternate database instead of ~/.vacation.ext; -m can be used to select an alternate message file instead of ~/.vacation.msg; and -s can be used to specify the reply address instead of the UNIX From line in the incoming message.

• A change to the mailx program allows for the From: header to be used as the basis of the sender instead of the envelope sender. This change makes mailx work like mailtool and dtmail.

Additional information on the Solaris version of sendmail can be found at http://www.sendmail.org/sun-specific/migration+sun.html.

Other sendmail Information Sources

Here is a list of additional information sources about sendmail.

• http://www.sendmail.org - Home page for sendmail

• http://www.sendmail.org/faq - FAQ for sendmail

• http://www.sendmail.org/m4/readme.html - README for new sendmail configuration files

• http://www.sendmail.org/sun-specific/migration+sun.html - Differences between sendmail delivered with the 2.6 release and release 7.