sendmail: HOW TO DISABLE the HELP function?

[john guardian]

Normally, in order to disable help from displaying the sendmail version you either have to comment the help option, delete the line from the help file, or delete the helpfile from the system.

Version is 8.13.1

Has anyone seen this and/or solved the problem?

Thx.

[Matti_Kurkela]

I understand your problem is that you want to disable the help function of Sendmail. This might be solved in many ways: one would be to drink a large enough amount of your favorite alchoholic beverage so that the desire to perform work goes away :)  But I guess this is not exactly what you're asking.

The location of the help file can be found in the Sendmail configuration file with:

grep -e HelpFile -e '^OH' /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

 Other than this bit of information, your question seems to include its own answer.

[john guardian]

Great, but I may have failed to mention that I already tried the above (or rather one of the 2nd shift admins did) and it did not work.

Guess I'll have to check myself in order to be certain she followed the directions.

Thx for the reply.

[john guardian]

ok. sendmail was installed, by default in daemon mode.

in order to config sendmail for "send only" mode, it appears that several things need to change:

/sbin/init.d/sendmail stop

then, mod the /etc/rc.config.d/mailserv for

SENDMAIL_SERVER=0

SENDMAIL_SENDONLY=1

server was originally set to 1

sendonly was originally unset

/sbin/init.d/sendmail stop

I'm still seeing a message in the mail.log about "send_only" not being set in the sendmail.cf file.

Is there something in the sendmail.cf file for this? Did not see anything commented?

Anyone?

[Earl_Crowder]

/sbin/init.d/sendmail   compares the DaemonOptions in sendmail.cf with the flags set in mailservs and if they don't match you see the message you indicated.

In order for sendonly to work, the DaemonPortOptions needs the Address=127.0.0.1

O DaemonPortOptions=Name=MTA, Address=127.0.0.1

O DaemonPortOptions=Port=587, Name=MSA, Address=127.0.0.1, M=E

[john guardian]

Update: The real complaint here is due to one thing:

telnet <hostname> 25

The name of host is unimportant, however what the SA wants is for mail to NOT respond w/any version/revision and/or any other kind of identifying information. So bascially looking for no/silent response. The machine is not used as a mail server so it doesn't expect to rx mail. When sendmail is used, it simply sends update messages to the SA group w/filesystem size and other data.

So, could someone PLEASE tell me what's req'd to disable this annoying response mechanism that broadcasts, amongst other things, th version of email that's running...

Appreciate any/all useful response(s). Thx.

[Earl_Crowder]

Change the SmtpGreetingMessage in sendmail.cf

#O SmtpGreetingMessage=$j Sendmail $v/$Z; $b
O SmtpGreetingMessage=

[john guardian]

Earl,

I've already done this... NO difference. In addition, it appears that the actual message format suggests that the version info etc is EXACTLY the same as what I get when I execute:

# strings sendmail | grep "Sendmail version"

Could this "behavioral feature" be compiled into the binary? Never saw this behavior before...

Is there something I'm missing here? I did stop/start sendmail after changing the .cf file as well.

Anyone else?

Thx...

[Earl_Crowder]

John,

Are there multiple SmtpGreetingMessage lines in the sendmail.cf?  If there are multiple entries in the CF, the last one is the one that takes effect.

Earl

[john guardian]

No multiple entries. It appears that the message is coming from one of the "strings sendmail | grep -i version" outputs, so I assume this "feature" has been compiled into the binary.

I have basically done everything that is normally done to get rid of this "feature".

Has anyone else run into this?