sendmail and nisplus aliases in HP/UX 11.11 (11i)

[Christian Iseli]

Hi folks,

I'm testing the new HPUX release 11i I just received. Seems to work fine.

But I stumbled on a problem with sendmail. I have setup the box to be a NIS+ client. The NIS+ server is a Solaris box.
My problem is the following line in the log:
Apr 27 18:05:55 cmpteam5 sendmail[2254]: SAA02252: SYSERR(root): Switch map aliases: unknown member map aliases.nisplus

It appears a lot of times in the log.

Can anybody tell me why ? And what to do to make sendmail happy ?

TIA. Cheers,
Christian

[Gadura Praveen]

Christian,

The problem is seen due to missing "/etc/nsswitch.conf" or incorrectly configured "/etc/nsswitch.conf". Make sure the "/etc/nsswitch.conf" file has the line:-
aliases: nisplus files

Stop and start sendmail.

Hope this helps !!!

[Christian Iseli]

Thanks for the reply, but that's not the problem here.
I have the /etc/nsswitch.conf file, and it contains the line about aliases...
I'd love to have truss, or strace, on that machine... :)

Cheers,
Christian

[Barry O Flanagan]

Looks more like your nisplus master/replica isn't serving the Aliases map by nisplus. Can you just confirm that if you do a :

niscat aliases.org_dir

you get something retured?

If you look under /var/nis/ on your nisplus master then you should see the names of the maps that are being distributed by nisplus. Your aliases file might be hiding under the name of mail_aliases.org_dir instead of aliases.org_dir . Try a niscat on that and lets take it from there?

[Christian Iseli]

Well, the Solaris machines seem to think that the mail alias map is named mail_aliases(.org_dir).

Do you mean to say the HP machines want the map named aliases(.org_dir) ?

If so, is there a way to change that ?

Christian

[Barry O Flanagan]

Nope - the nisplus aliases map should be mail_aliases.org_dir alright, so thats ok.

However, should you not be pointing your sendmail.cf at the correct aliases map? I think theres a line in there to point at a map rather than locally (I'm not a sendmail expert!) ?

[Christian Iseli]

I tried two more things. I changed the line in /etc/nsswitch.conf to read:
aliases: files
and the messages disappear...

I also did a
strings /usr/sbin/sendmail | grep nisplus
and this finds nothing...

Do I have to somehow patch my sendmail ? Is there a special NIS+ version ?

Christian

[Barry O Flanagan]

I wonder is it a NIS+ credentials problem? If you have access to your NIS+ master or you can do a niscat on your NIS+ client, then do a:

niscat cred.org_dir | grep

where client-name is the HP box. Normally, each client of a NIS+ domain must have a DES credential in the cred table - I guess its possible that your client can't see the aliases map if it doesn't have a credential in the domain. To add a DES cred for the client do a:

nisaddcred -p unix.@domain.com -P .domain.com. des

Where clientname is your client.

Might be worth checking the properties on the domain object too: niscat -o domain.com.

[Christian Iseli]

I think the credentials are fine. I can login using my NIS+ accounts with no problem. I can do a
niscat mail_aliases.org_dir
and get all the entries just fine.

Even the automounter is working flawlessly...

My only problem seems to be sendmail. I have checked the sendmail.cf on the Solaris boxes, and there is no special mention of the nisplus mail alias map. There is something in the (Solaris) binary, though, as strings show. That's why I think I might need another sendmail binary for the HP, but haven't seen one anywhere...

Christian

[Barry O Flanagan]

Dont forget though that when you login, you use your own NIS+ principal, not the client's principal. Just because you can login, doesn't always mean your client has a DES credential or permission to access that map.

On the binary bit, if I do a strings on my /usr/sbin/sendmail on my 11.0 client I get :

aliases.nisplus nisplus -kalias -vexpansion -d mail_aliases.org_dir
mail_aliases.org_dir

I don't think theres a special version of sendmail for a NIS+ situation. Strikes me as a permissions problem on the map.

[Christian Iseli]

Well, I can do the niscat of mail_aliases.org_dir while logged in as root, so I'm pretty sure the permissions are fine. That machine has read-only access to the maps, but I don't see how that could be a problem.

The funny thing, when I compare with your strings output, is that I don't have those strings in my code. Here is all I get:
/usr/bin/strings /usr/sbin/sendmail |grep alias
aliases
rebuildaliases1
rebuildaliases2
groupwritablealiasfile
worldwritablealiasfile
linkedaliasfileinwritabledir
aliases
aliases.files
aliases.nis
aliases
mail.aliases
aliases
expanded by alias
expanded (to multi-recipient alias)

So I suspect I'll need to get a different sendmail. But I didn't see any on the distribution CD (yet...)

Christian

[Barry O Flanagan]

Hmmm, thats a very different output to mine alright - now the question is what version of sendmail are you running? I've got Sendmail 8.8.6 (PHNE_17190)/8.7.1 here.

[Christian Iseli]

Sorry for th elong delay, but I've been unable to connect to forums.itrc.hp.com for the last two days...

I use the sendmail that came bundled with HP/UX 11i (11.11). That's what it says:

220 cmpteam5.unil.ch ESMTP Sendmail 8.9.3/8.9.3; Thu, 3 May 2001 17:01:16 +0200
(MEST)

[Gadura Praveen]

Christian,

I am not sure , if this will work , but can you try and modify the "/etc/mail/service.switch" file and change:-
aliases files

to

aliases nisplus files

Stop and restart sendmail.

[Christian Iseli]

Thanks for the suggestion, but the short answer is that it doesn't work...

I tried two things. First, I tried setting alias to nisplus + files in both /etc/nsswitch.conf and in /etc/mail/service.switch. This causes the error messages to appear, and nisplus aliases don't work.

Second, I tried setting only files for alias in /etc/nsswitch.conf, and nisplus + files in /etc/mail/service.switch. In this case, there are no error messages, but nisplus aliases don't work either...