understaffing apparent due to mailer trouble

[Bruce Barnett]

In article <1991Apr19.022330.22141 at csl.dl.nec.com> ylee at csl.dl.nec.com (Ying-Da Lee) writes:

>So it does cover all the varieties
>   you happened to mention. 

But you must be using the same version of sendmail on each machine.
I am not going to support the sendmail binary on 100,000 different
machines. Neither am I going to be responsible for each and every
sendmail.cf out there. 

If not, I don't understand how you can use one sendmail.cf file for
each of those machines. Sun, DEC, and HP have different sendmails with
different features. DECNET mail, YP, name server support, etc.

Here are some particulars that are different for HP/UX, Ultrix, and SunOS:

HP/UX : 
	OI  - Option - for nameserver support
	$<  - RHS - program()
SunOS:
	OR  - Option - NFS mounted spool partitions
	${  -  RHS - ypmap( , )
	$=m - LHS - c_mydomain
	$=m - RHS - any_in_mydomainname
	$%y - LHS - any_in_etc_hosts 
	$%? - LHS - any_in_map_?
Ultrix:
	${  - LHS	ypalias()
	$"  - LHS	yppasswd()

As you can see these variations determine how sendmail interfaces with
the Name server, YP maps and /etc/hosts.

The point is: the vendors have added features to their sendmail
executable. The documentation tells people how to set up their
machines. Using a single version of the executable and/or the
configuration file means
	1) "extra" features will go away unless I add them 
		to the sendmail sources.
	2) The burden of support falls on my shoulder for every machine.

Maybe both of those points are acceptable to you. They are not to me.
And I do mean 100,000 machines. Even the 700 machines in this site is
too much, considering the two dozen different versions of Unix.


--
Bruce G. Barnett	barnett at crdgw1.ge.com	uunet!crdgw1!barnett