general sendmail.cf file ?

[Debbie Fleith]

Just wanted to confirm that all lines in the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file that begin with "#" are comments and those values are not configured in sendmail.

[Kent Ostby]

correct.

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

You are correct although "values not configured in sendmail" might not be precisely correct. In some cases the commented parameters are set to default values.

[Debbie Fleith]

How do I know what the default sendmail values are?

[Christopher Caldwell]

Your best bet to determine defaults is to read a current version of the "Batbook" (sendmail by Costales and Allman). Each configurable parameter generally lists a default.

You can check documentation on http://sendmail.org. Some of the defaults are listed there.

Finally, you can look in the m4 files:
/usr/contrib/sendmail/usr/newconfig/etc/mail/cf/m4
some of the defaults are there, but take a couple of Tylenol before you try to figure out what's going on.

[Christopher Caldwell]

BTW, as A. Clay Stephenson sort of suggested, the commented values are generally the defaults.

[Bill Hassell]

Unfortunately, the sendmail.cf file format and options change with the version of sendmail. Even a patch to sendmail can change the requirements for sendmail.cf. In HP-UX, copies of the original config files are stored in /usr/newconfig/etc and if a patch introduces a new config file, the original file is left alone (preserving any customization) and the new version is stored in /usr/newconfig/etc/mail

It is imperative to log every change made to sendmail.cf. Unlike most config files, a diff of two .cf files is usually meaningless because some options get moved around.