Chapter 5<P> sendmail administration
sendmail administration
sendmail(ADMN)is one of two mail routers provided by SCO.
While the default router, MMDF, provides several key benefits,
sendmail is most widely used router in the UNIX community.
For a comparison to MMDF, see
``Comparison of sendmail with MMDF''.
sendmail has several key features:
implements a general internetwork mail routing facility, featuring
aliasing and forwarding, automatic routing to network gateways,
and flexible configuration.
is a mail router that collects messages generated by a
Mail User Agent (MUA) such as
mail(C),
determines a route for delivery, edits the message header as required
by the destination and delivery agent, and calls an appropriate
delivery agent (called a mailer) to deliver the mail.
Typical delivery mechanisms include
TCP/IP (using SMTP), UUCP, x.400,
and local delivery programs such as lmail.
supports either Internet-style addressing, such as
user@domain, or UUCP-style addressing, such as
host!user.
supports delivery of mail with X.400-style addressing
to an X.400 gateway machine if such a machine is
specified in the configuration.
handles text format files only.
Binary data is not allowed unless included in the
mail message as a uuencoded file.
See the
uuencode(C)
manual page.
is based on:
RFC 822 (Internet Mail Format Protocol)
RFC 821 (Simple Mail Transport Protocol)
RFC 1123 (Internet Host Requirements)
RFC 1425 (SMTP Service Extensions)
However, in many cases sendmail
can be configured to exceed these protocols,
as described in this chapter.
does not provide a user interface for composing and reading
mail, nor does it do actual mail delivery. These tasks are handled by the
MUA and the mailer, respectively.
is difficult to configure manually.
This implementation of sendmail,
however, includes a script that creates a basic configuration
that is adequate for most sites. For additional information on how to
manually fine-tune this configuration, see:
``Tuning sendmail configuration''
and
``Advanced sendmail configuration''