Configuration Issues With NIS+ and sendmail

This list includes all the configuration issues that you must resolve before using sendmail when using NIS+ as your only name service.

Mail domain name - If you are setting up NIS+ as your primary name service, sendmail can look up the mail domain from the NIS+ sendmailvars table, a two-column NIS+ table with one key column and one value column. To set up your mail domain, you must add one entry to this table. This entry should have the key column set to the literal string maildomain and the value column set to your mail domain name (for example, admin.acme.com). Although NIS+ allows any string in the sendmailvars table, the suffix rule still applies for the mail system to work correctly. You can use nistbladm to add the maildomain entry to the sendmailvars table. For example:

nistbladm -A key="maildomain" value=<mail domain> sendmailvars.org_dir.<NIS+ domain>

Notice that this mail domain is a suffix of the NIS+ domain.



Mailhost host name - You must have a mailhost entry in the NIS+ hosts table.




Full host names - NIS+ "understands" the full host name. Following the regular NIS+ setup procedure satisfies this requirement.




Matching full and short host names - To satisfy this requirement, you can duplicate the entries in the host table, or you can enter all host entries in the user name service domains into a master host table at mail domain level.




Multiple NIS domains in one mail domain - To satisfy this requirement, you can duplicate the entries in all the host tables, or you can type all host entries in the user name service domains into a master host table at mail domain level. Because you are merging (logical or physical) multiple host tables into one host table, the same host name cannot be reused in the multiple name service domain sharing a common mail domain.