SMPT without sendmail running 11.i

[Richard Pereira_1]

Hi,

Is there the equivalent of /etc/mail/submit.cf in hpux 11.31? I use this frequently on solaris but I noticed my HP hosts are all running sendmail daemon and use the DS param in sendmail.cf. Obviously I would prefer to turn off sendmail and use submit.cf instead. Can this be done?

[Matti_Kurkela]

Is your 11.31 a cold install or an upgrade from 11.23?

The standard way to do disable mail reception on HP-UX 11.31 is to set SENDMAIL_SENDONLY=1 in /etc/rc.config.d/mailservs and restart sendmail.

If /etc/mail/submit.cf exists, 11.31's /sbin/init.d/sendmail detects it and uses it. If your system was upgraded from 11.23, the upgrade procedure might have avoided installing submit.cf so that your mail configuration wouldn't be accidentally changed by the upgrade.

Look into /usr/newconfig/etc/mail: in there you should find a factory-default submit.cf you can copy to /etc/mail and then modify to your requirements.

If your plan on Solaris is to make submit.cf pass the mails directly to a remote mail server, then please consider this:

In the default configuration, applications can use the mail/mailx/sendmail commands to submit messages for delivery. If a remote mail server is not reachable, the mail will remain in the local mail queue, from where it will be re-transmitted by the local sendmail daemon as soon as the remote mail server becomes reachable again.

If you disable the sendmail daemon and make submit.cf refer to the remote mail server directly, you can lose mail whenever the remote mail server is not reachable. What could have been a simple delayed delivery will become a complete failure.

MK

[Richard Pereira_1]

Its a cold install. I found the template in /usr/newconfig/etc/mail.

Im a bit perplexed about the sendmailonly parameter. So even if I just want to relay you, I still need to run the sendmail daemon?

[Richard Pereira_1]

oh disregard my last reply, i just re-read your last 2 paragraphs. Thanks for your clear explanation.