Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!iuvax!rutgers!haven!trantor.umd.edu!louie
From: louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
Subject: Re: Non-root sendmail?
Message-ID: <3032@haven.umd.edu>
Date: 11 Nov 88 21:57:45 GMT
References: <164@heart-of-gold> <1572@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu>
Sender: news@haven.umd.edu
Reply-To: louie@trantor.umd.edu (Louis A. Mamakos)
Organization: University of Maryland, College Park
Lines: 23

In article <1572@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu> badri@valhalla.ee.rochester.edu (Badri Lokanathan) writes:
>In article <164@heart-of-gold>, jc@heart-of-gold (John M Chambers) writes:
>> 
>> Is there a way to run sendmail under a non-root id?  
>> 
>It may not be possible for the following reason: there is no way currently
>for any other id to concatenate a new message to /usr/spool/mail/fubar,
>where fubar typically has rw to owner only. If permissions were not so, then
>other users could peek into fubar's mail.

Funny thing is, sendmail doesn't deliver mail to the user's mailbox.  It
invokes '/bin/mail -d' to actually concatinate the mail to the end of the
user's mailbox.  Look at the defintion of the the local mailer in the
sendmail configuration file /usr/lib/sendmail.cf if you want to see how
it is invoked.

By invoking /bin/mail, sendmail doesn't have to know about which flavor
of mailbox locking you happen to be using on that system (link to lock file,
flock, etc).


Louis A. Mamakos  WA3YMH    Internet: louie@TRANTOR.UMD.EDU
University of Maryland, Computer Science Center - Systems Programming