sendmail shock. Bibliography?

[Bruce Barnett]

In article <2801C2BB.29BD at tct.com> chip at tct.com (Chip Salzenberg) writes:
>>	user at XYZ.com.user@anything.arpa
>>
>I am slack-jawed with amazement that any postmaster would jump through
>hoops to fix an address so badly broken, instead of telling the people
>in charge of domain XYZ to get a life.  Er, a mailer.

First of all, we all work for the same company. 

Second, we deal with a half-dozen different transport mechanism, and
every possible mail system a vendor has ever "blessed" by shipping. :-(
I do not want to become an expert in every possible variation of the
sendmail.cf file that has ever been shipped. Nor do I want to maintain
a single sendmail.cf file for every possible variation of Unix that
might be out there.

Third, the expertise required to send up a properly configured mail
system is not something you can learn by reading the vendor's manuals.

Fourth, some sites don't even have "system managers".  I consider
myself lucky if I find someone willing to fix the problems that exist.

I can either spend hours, days, or weeks on the phone, teaching the person on
the other end how to set up their system. This is not in my job
description to be a consultant for everyone who has root priviledge on
a workstation in GE.

Or I can add one line to the sendmail.cf file.

I typically try to push as much responsibility on the individual with
the problem. But I can't always get them to fix the problem.

>No, Smail 3.1 can't.  As for Smail 3.2, it might have a rewriting
>facility.  But if it does, you can bet that it won't be as hard to
>read as the Sendmail "standard".

Hey I'm biased. The "standard" is no longer sendmail.cf - it is Ease 3.

If you want to criticize the Ease syntax - fine with me. I didn't
design it. All I did was fix the remaining problems in Ease 2.

It is true the default code generated by the cf-to-ease translator
isn't the best in the world. Someone could write a new general purpose
configuration file that is more readable. I admit that

	if ( host . domain ! user ) 

is more readable than the default

	if ( one_or_more . one_or_more ! one_or_more )


But I don't have the time to write the Ultimate Sendmail file in Ease.
I'll leave that to someone else.
--
Bruce G. Barnett	barnett at crdgw1.ge.com	uunet!crdgw1!barnett