SUMMARY: Berkeley Sendmail on 4.1.4

From: Stefan Jon Silverman (sjs@sunthing.sjsinc.com)
Date: Wed Jul 12 1995 - 06:43:08 CDT


Folks:

        Summary time again...first thanx to:

        Casper Dik <casper@Holland.Sun.COM>
        Christopher L. Barnard <cbarnard@CS.UChicago.EDU>
        Todd C. Miller <Todd.Miller@cs.colorado.edu>
        Christopher A. Stewart <allan@mazama.com>
        Christopher Davis <ckd@loiosh.kei.com>

        First thanx to those who pointed out my typo...I did in fact compile
the program with -DNDBM and not -DNEWDB (I should try getting some more
sleep before I post queries to this list... ___SPELLING COUNTS!!!___

        Though the root of the problem was manifested in DNS, the solution
turned out to be in NIS. When I configured the DNS correctly, I didn't even
think to look beyond a local NIS configuration (see below).

        Because this was going to be the only machine in the facility using
DNS, I decided to just turn on the "B=-" flag in the yp makefile and alter
the NIS default behavior to NIS resolution --> DNS resolution --> /etc/hosts
resolution in a NIS domain of one machine (with it as master). I also got
rid of the '+:' entries from the appropriate files so that nothing would
be NIS broadcast to the connected internal networks of the facility. What I
overlooked, however, is that my client had re-NIS-domained the rest of the
facility to an internal new name (using the old name on the DNS machine for
the world to see), but had not cleaned up the /var/yp directories (i.e. "make
go away") on the internal NIS master and several other machines. The result
was that the two NIS masters were jabbering at each other and thoroughly
confusing the DNS host (the internal network seemed to be just fine).

        After configuring /etc/printcap to point to an internal machine, the
real problem came to light when the lpd daemon started complaining about not
being able to find its machine name on the connected network. This caused
me to take a look at the local NIS maps and, lo and behold, I found the
entire NIS maps for all of the internal domains sitting there and wiping out
the DNS hosts picture of the world.

        Once we cleaned up the NIS master on the internal network and rebooted
the world, everything worked just fine, including the new sendmail.

        Original query and responses follow:

        thanx,

        b c++'ing u,

        %-) sjs

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Stefan Jon Silverman - President SJS Associates, N.A., Inc.
                                                             572 Chestnut Street
Distributed Systems Architecture & Implementation San Francisco, Ca. 94133
                                                             Phone: 415 989 2741
E-mail: sjs@sjsinc.com Cell: 415 519 3494
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
                  Weebles wobble, but they don't fall down!!!
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                        ORIGINAL QUERY
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Folks:

        Another trip to the font of all knowledge....

        I'm trying to get berkeley sendmail to work on a 4.1.4 machine.

        My first attempt was using the latest 8.6.12 and compiling with the
-DDBM option only (not -DNDBM because I didn't have internet access [this
will be the firewall machine as soon as the ISP gets the frame-relay line
up and working "RSN"] and couldn't get the new berkely dbm code for this
option).

        It compiled, installed and then:

        - running "newaliases" against an 8.6.9 sendmail.cf file took
                about 7 minutes on an IPX...hmmmmm!!!!
        - the boot initialization of "sendmail" from rc.local takes
                about 5 minutes....very annoying...I thought I had a dead
                machine....
        - local mail (command line "mail" sent to myself) takes about
                5-7 minutes to get delivered, activate in.comsat and change
                the icon on my mailtool (checks mail every 15 seconds) to a
                full mailbox.

        So I thought to myself (grumble, grumble, grumble -- this is supposed
to be very straightforward) I will rev down to 8.6.9 (which I happened to
have source for locally) which runs just fine on my 4.1.2 firewall machine
at my office (using the same compile-time define options).

        SAME SYMPTOMS AS ABOVE!!!!!!!!

        I ended up re-installing the original SunOS sendmail (luckely I had
just renamed all of the files involved and not blown them away) and every-
thing works just as it's supposed to.

        I do, however, need to get 8.6.12 up and running on this machine in
time for the frame-relay connection (next week sometime) because I don't
trust the security of the Sun product and have a sendmail.cf for 8.6.9 that
I want to use (and Sun's sendmail barfs on it).

        HELP!!!!!!!

        TIA...will summarize if warrented....

        btw: I thought 4.1.4 was supposed to fix lots of things...I'm having
lots of other problems with PD software that works just fine on 4.1.2 and
4.1.3 (i.e., ppp-2.1.2 kernel install, and the damm syslogd behavior working
with tcp_wrappers).

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
                                RESPONSES
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From: Casper Dik <casper@Holland.Sun.COM>

Try trace to see where it hangs.

Why didn't you use -DNDBM? SunOS 4.1.x comes with ndbm.

You're probably confused with "DB", that's the very latest code.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From: "Christopher L. Barnard" <cbarnard@CS.UChicago.EDU>

> It compiled, installed and then:
>
> - running "newaliases" against an 8.6.9 sendmail.cf file took
> about 7 minutes on an IPX...hmmmmm!!!!
> - the boot initialization of "sendmail" from rc.local takes
> about 5 minutes....very annoying...I thought I had a dead
> machine....
> - local mail (command line "mail" sent to myself) takes about
> 5-7 minutes to get delivered, activate in.comsat and change
> the icon on my mailtool (checks mail every 15 seconds) to a
> full mailbox.

The problem may actually be this:

> (not -DNDBM because I didn't have internet access [this
> will be the firewall machine as soon as the ISP gets the frame-relay line
> up and working "RSN"]

I had a (networked) machine that showed these symptoms, and a I finally
figured out the problem by sending email to Eric Allman: I was missing
an /etc/resolv.conf file, so DNS lookups were timing out. Try creating
an /etc/resolv.conf file and see if that works. I'm not sure what you'd
put in it for a non-networked machine, but maybe you could fake it...

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From: "Todd C. Miller" <Todd.Miller@cs.colorado.edu>

>
> My first attempt was using the latest 8.6.12 and compiling with the
> -DDBM option only (not -DNDBM because I didn't have internet access [this
> will be the firewall machine as soon as the ISP gets the frame-relay line
> up and working "RSN"] and couldn't get the new berkely dbm code for this
> option).

I hope you mean that you compiled with -DNDBM (as opposed to -DNEWDB)

        ----- NOTE: I did, sorry (sjs) -----

> It compiled, installed and then:
>
> - running "newaliases" against an 8.6.9 sendmail.cf file took
> about 7 minutes on an IPX...hmmmmm!!!!
> - the boot initialization of "sendmail" from rc.local takes
> about 5 minutes....very annoying...I thought I had a dead
> machine....
> - local mail (command line "mail" sent to myself) takes about
> 5-7 minutes to get delivered, activate in.comsat and change
> the icon on my mailtool (checks mail every 15 seconds) to a
> full mailbox.

To speed up the newaliases use the following in your sendmail.mc file:
    define(`confCHECK_ALIASES', `False')dnl
Otherwise sendmail will check the RHS of every alias when doing
a newaliases. For large aliases files this can take a long time.

You know, this really sounds like a DNS problem. I've heard that sun
integrated bind into 4.1.4 so that may be part of your problem. To
find out, try compiling sendmail on your 4.1.2 machine and use the
same binary on your 4.1.4 machine. Sendmail is built statically on suns
so if the 4.1.2-built sendmail works on your 4.1.4 machine you can
be pretty sure that your grief is caused by some library problem...
The best thing in this case may be to grab bind 4.9.3beta22 and
use the libresolv.a that comes with it instead of sun's libresolv.a.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From: "Christopher A. Stewart" <allan@mazama.com>

Off hand I would say you don't have DNS set up.. Just a guess though..

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

From: Christopher Davis <ckd@loiosh.kei.com>

You want -DNDBM, SunOS comes with ndbm as dbm; just take out -DNEWDB.
Without -DNDBM it will read the aliases file as text, which hurts
performance big time.

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