[SOLVED] Sendmail not working right on Slackware current

mfoley · 03-16-2021, 11:47 AM

I've recently upgraded to Slackware Current. I use sendmail, but things aren't working right with that on Current. For one thing, seems to be running postfix instead of sendmail. maillog has only "hostname postfix/" messages and not "hostname sm-mta" or "hostname sendmail" messages like sendmail puts out. postfix apparently does not use /etc/mail/aliases. And, in general, I want to use sendmail. I have milters and other customization for sendmail I've invested time in.

My sendmail.mc file on Current is identical to the 14.2 one. Likewise rc.sendmail is identical and set to executable. When I run rc.sendmail I get:

Code:

$ /etc/rc.d/rc.sendmail restart
sendmail: no process found
Starting sendmail MTA daemon:  /usr/sbin/sendmail -L sm-mta -bd -q25m
Starting sendmail MSP queue runner:  /usr/sbin/sendmail -L sm-msp-queue -Ac -q25m
1 12:31:41 root@quadmon:/usr/share/sendmail/cf/cf
# postfix/postfix-script: fatal: the Postfix mail system is already running

I see nowhere that postix is run from rc.sendmail. At system start rc.M has:

Code:

rc.M:# authentication services for sendmail/postfix:
rc.M:# Start the mail server. Try the rc.sendmail script first, then try rc.postfix.
rc.M:elif [ -x /etc/rc.d/rc.postfix -a -x usr/sbin/postdrop ]; then
rc.M:  /etc/rc.d/rc.postfix start

rc.postfix is NOT executable.

I don't get how this is working. Can someone enlighten me?

ctrlaltca · 03-16-2021, 12:35 PM

The postfix package includes its own /usr/sbin/sendmail binary.
You may want to uninstall the postfix package and reinstall the sendmail package from extra/.

mfoley · 03-16-2021, 07:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ctrlaltca

The postfix package includes its own /usr/sbin/sendmail binary.
You may want to uninstall the postfix package and reinstall the sendmail package from extra/.

I uninstalled postfix, downloaded sendmail-8.16.1-i586-3.txz from extra and installed it. Before doing that I checked what was installed and it said that package was already installed. Nevertheless I did an installpkg.

Now, when I run sendmail I get:

Code:

# /usr/sbin/sendmail -d0.1
-su: sendmail: No such file or directory

The executable is in /usr/sbin and appears executable:

Code:

# ls -l /usr/sbin/sendmail
-r-xr-sr-x 1 root smmsp 844032 2020-10-20 17:39 /usr/sbin/sendmail*

# file /usr/sbin/sendmail
/usr/sbin/sendmail: setgid ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib/ld-linux.so.2, stripped

Any idea what's wrong?

mfoley · 03-16-2021, 08:13 PM

More info ...

I just noticed that the 'file' listing on that showed 32-bit, not 64. I downloaded the wrong package. I uninstalled the sendmail-8.16.1-x86_64-3 package, yet that binary is still there! So, I reinstalled sendmail-8.16.1-x86_64-3. That appears to do it.

I guess all I needed to do was removepkg postfix and not do the download from extra. Test emails now work and work with /etc/mail/aliases.

I'll give this a couple of days before I call it solved.

I take it that postfix and not sendmail is the way of the future for Slackware? I assume postfix can do everything sendmail does (aliases, milters, ...) but "differently"?