Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!wang!comm.wang.com!lws From: lws@comm.wang.com (Lyle Seaman) Newsgroups: comp.unix.sysv386,wang.unix-dev Subject: workarounds for TCP/IP & mail problems (SCO) Keywords: Obscureware Sendmail TCP/IP bugs SCO UNIX Message-ID: <1990Nov8.202643.8427@comm.wang.com> Date: 8 Nov 90 20:26:43 GMT Organization: Wang Labs, Platform Comms. Lines: 45 Background: because MMDF (as shipped) is broken, I chose to use Sendmail. Sendmail is activated by doing a "mkdev sendmail-init" which internally runs a script to generate a configuration file. This script can be invoked by "mkdev cf". The "mkdev sendmail-init" also modifies the /etc/tcp script so that sendmail is run when TCP/IP is started up. The mkdev cf idea is a good one, and I'd be pretty happy if it worked. Unfortunately, it's broken, so the sendmail.cf file it generates is unuseable. To work around this, you will have to get more involved in sendmail rewriting rules than you want to. If you already know sendmail, then you know what you'll have to do. I've hacked up the .cf file pretty badly, but it works OK for me now. The "mkdev sendmail-init" adds sendmail to the /etc/tcp script so that sendmail is started automatically when the system is booted. Unfortunately, sendmail will not deliver mail in that case, it only queues mail. Every attempt to deliver mail results in a failure of either "Host Name Lookup Failed" or "can't exec /bin/lmail". This doesn't occur when sendmail is started manually by killing the sendmail process in the background and resubmitting it. It also doesn't occur if you do "tcp stop; tcp start". It only occurs when tcp is started at boot time. Unfortunately, if you do a "tcp stop; tcp start" manually, no one can rlogin, telnet, or rcmd to your machine, or rcp (or ftp) to or from it: they will receive an error "Bad login user id". The only way that you can restart TCP/IP while permitting those functions is to reboot. But that prevents sendmail from working. The solution is to edit your /etc/tcp script and change the startup of sendmail from: /usr/lib/sendmail -bd -q1h to: su root -c '/usr/lib/sendmail -bd -q1h' This works around the Obscurware LUID hack, and permits sendmail to work properly when the system is booted. Of course, you still are forced to reboot to restart TCP/IP; there's no way to restart it while allowing the above-listed functions to work without mucking with kmem. -- Lyle Wang lws@comm.wang.com 508 967 2322 Lowell, MA, USA uunet!comm.wang.com!lws The scum always rises to the top.