sendmail Desktop Reference: Help for Unix System Administrators

This quick-reference guide to the sendmail program provides a complete overview of sendmail, from command-line switches to configuration commands, from options declarations to macro definitions, and from m4 features to debugging switches -- all packed into a convenient, carry-around booklet. sendmail is the program that acts like a traffic cop in routing and delivering mail on UNIX-based networks -- it is a Mail Transport Agent (MTA), accepting mail from Mail User Agents (MUAs), mail users (humans), and other MTAs. Then, it delivers that mail to Mail Delivery Agents (MDAs) on the local machine, or transports that mail to another MTA on another machine. Although sendmail is used on almost every UNIX system, it's one of the last great uncharted territories -- and most difficult utilities to learn -- in UNIX system administration. Designed as a companion volume to sendmail, 2nd Edition, this guide covers the latest version (V8.8) from the University of California, Berkeley, and has extensive cross-references to sections in the main volume. Both books are coauthored by Eric Allman, the creator of sendmail.

Table of Contents:
Preface V8.8 Specific Conventions Chapter 1 How to Run Alternative Names for sendmail Command-Line Switches Some Handy Debugging Switches Rule-Testing Mode (-bt) Commands Hints Chapter 2 The sendmail.cf File Overview Delivery Agent Equates Delivery Agent F= Flags Defined Macros Class Macros Options The Timeout Option Rule Sets Delivery Agent S= and R= The check_ Rule Sets Rules Wildcard Operators in the LHS Positional Operators in the RHS Other Operators in the RHS Operators that Return a Triple Conditional Operators Hints Chapter 3 Databases Support in Makefile Aliasing The ~/\.forward file :include: Files and Mailing Lists The makemap Program The K Command Classes Databases in Rules The User Database Hints Chapter 4 Configuring with m4 Special Local Parameters FEATURE Declarations MAILER Declarations Virtual User Tables Mailer Tables Hints Chapter 5 Additional Information Sources

About the Author :
Bryan Costales is director of technology with Mercury Mail in Denver, Colorado. Always at the cutting edge, he "telecomutes" from his home in Laramie, Wyoming. He has been active in system administration for over fifteen years and has been writing articles and books about computer software for over ten years. His most notable books are C from A to Z (Prentice Hall), Unix Communications (Howard Sams), and, of course, sendmail (O'Reilly & Associates). In his rare free time, he dreams of sailing the Gulf coast and writes fiction with a group called Make Believe Sailors. Eric Allman is the original author of sendmail. While working at the University of California, he got involved with the early UNIX effort at Berkeley. His first experiences with UNIX were with 4th Edition, and he still has the manuals to prove it (and has been accused of being a pack rat because of it). Over the years, he wrote a number of utilities that appeared with various releases of BSD, including the -me macros, tset, trek, syslog, vacation, and of course sendmail. Besides working on the INGRES database management project and the Mammoth infrastructure project at Berkeley, Eric worked on window systems at the International Instituted for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, Britton Lee (later Sharebase) doing database user and application interfaces, and at the International Computer Science Institute, contributing to the Ring Array Processor project for neural-net-based speech recognition. He also co-authored the "C Advisor" column for Unix Review for several years. Eric has been accused of working incessantly, enjoys writing with fountain pens, and collects wines, which he stashes in the cellar of the house that he shares with Kirk McKusick, his partner of 17 and-some-odd years. He is also treasurer of USENIX Association.