Sendmail Configuration.

[Manoj Sivan]

Hi All,

I would like to upgrade sendmail in my HPUX and Linux systems as per security alert. Can anyone guide me with steps/docs. Thanks a lot in advance.

Manoj

[Patrick Wallek · Accepted solution]

Since you don't mention what version of HP-UX you have, here's a couple of options.

Sendmail 8.13.3 for HP-UX 11iv1 (11.11) and 11iv2 (11.23):
http://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=SMAIL813

Sendmail 8.11.1 for HP-UX 11.0
http://h20293.www2.hp.com/portal/swdepot/displayProductInfo.do?productNumber=SMAIL811

Docs with steps to upgrade are included on the page for each release.

As for Linux -- If you patch regularly you should eventually get the latest version. But again, since you don't mention which version (vendor or release level) you have it is very difficult to help.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom Manoj,

Basically its a download (Patrick's post) followed by a swinstall -s full_path \*

No reboot is required.

By itself sendmail is still a problem on security.

You may not need to run the sendmail daemon if your server only sends mail. You can disable inbound mail by stopping sendmail:

/sbin/init.d/sendmail stop

You can permanently stop inbound mail with:
vi /etc/rc.config.d/mailsvrs

Change the first variable to 0 instead of 1, the default.

Note that you may wish to harden your sendmail configuation if sendmail is to be left on with this script:

http://www.hpux.ws/buildmail.hpux.text

As far as Linux goes, installation depends on the distribution. Redhat lets you rpm -Uvh sendmail-file.rpm

It makes a copy of the sendmail.cf file as sendmail.cf.rpmnew

Any customized configuration from a sendmail.mc macro file will require you to re-run your script to generate a new sendmail.cf file.

Its important to do the upgrade on a test system first to guage the impact.

I manage sendmail on a series of linux servers that until recently were the primary mail gateways for an entire company. It requires caution and careful testing.

SEP