initial summary (sendmail shock)

[Pierre Asselin]

I seem to have started a cross-thread on another group.  Anyway,

This is an initial summary of the responses to my "Sendmail shock"
post.  Thanks to Steven Freed, James Peregrino, Joe Garvey, Fuat C.
Baran, Robert E. Van Cleef, David J. Bianco, Eliot Lear.  Replies keep
coming in just a bit faster than I can digest them.  Your name may not
be on the list.  And Chip Salzenberg.

To understand what's going on in sendmail,
-- Many people recommend the Sun System and Network Administration
   Manuals.  Chapter 23 for SunOS 4.1, chapter 18 for SunOS 4.0.
   Based on the Allman papers below (?).
-- RFC821: Simple Mail Transfer Protocol",
   RFC822: Standard for the format of ARPA Internet text messages.
   Anonymous ftp from NIC.DDN.MIL or NIS.NSF.NET, password "guest".
-- "Inter-Network Mail Guide", by John J. Chew.
   1001 address conversions.
   Anonymous ftp from ra.msstate.edu [130.18.80.10] or [130.18.96.37]
   in ~ftp/pub/docs/internetwork-mail-guide.
-- Doc files from Sendmail+IDA, anonymous ftp from uunet.
   Included:
     "Sendmail --An Internetwork Mail Router" by Eric Allman;
     "Mail Systems and Addressing", Allman (USENIX '83);
     "Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide", Allman(+Lennard Loevstrand)
     "Electronic Mail Addressing in Theory and Practice", Loevstrand;
     RFC's 821-2; RFC 819(domain name system); RFC1123(protocol requirements).
-- Rob Kolstad (and others!) kindly sent me a copy of his paper
   "Daemons and Dragons/That sendmail.cf File".  (UNIX Review, vol 8,
   numbers 1 and 2, pp. 96-103, 94-102).  I'm looking at it now.
-- The comp.mail newsgroups.
-- "a brief tutorial on sendmail rules", posted to
   net.unix-wizards,net.mail (Dr. Charles Hedrick, Rutgers U, ca '85)

These references do much to break the recursion.  I also received some
book titles, but I'm still digesting.

When ready to play,

--"Ease2.0, a language for sendmail.cf files".  Good to write a sendmail.cf
   from scratch, but not to tweak an existing one.  In volume 17 of
   comp.sources.unix.  If Ease 3.0 was posted recently, I didn't find
   it at uunet.
-- Smail 3.1, a sendmail replacement with human-readable files.
   Comp.sources.unix, vol.11.  May or may not be an option for me.

Lucky for me, I can get away with exceptionally stoopid kludges
and do it right later.

  --Pierre Asselin, Applied Magnetics Corp.  I speak for me.