Xref: utzoo comp.mail.headers:450 comp.mail.misc:1532 comp.mail.sendmail:388 comp.mail.uucp:2584
Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!husc6!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!nic.MR.NET!xanth!wisner
From: wisner@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Bill Wisner)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.headers,comp.mail.misc,comp.mail.sendmail,comp.mail.uucp
Subject: Re: Still trying to get smart routing working.
Message-ID: <7094@xanth.cs.odu.edu>
Date: 8 Jan 89 10:50:50 GMT
References: <412@execu.UUCP>
Reply-To: wisner@xanth.cs.odu.edu (Bill Wisner)
Organization: Old Dominion University, Norfolk Va.
Lines: 46

In article <412@execu.UUCP> dewey@execu.UUCP (Dewey Henize) writes:
>Our alias file is, as Sun recommends, of the form
>fred:	fred@execu
>joe:	joe@prickleypear
>...etc...

Sounds bogus to me. If fred and joe are real accounts that want to receive
mail on another machine, give them .forward files. If they're not real
accounts and you're setting up forwarding addresses, disregard this
paragraph.

>Is this the right form for smail/sendmail?

The form is fine. Smail knows how to grok Sendmail's alias file format.

>The sendmail.cf from Sun seems to be messed up, at least according to the docs
>I read in one of the Sun manuals.  Supposedly (no, I'm not a guru, not even
>close) the construct for a rhs of $:$>8 should direct more processing to 
>ruleset 8 - but there isn't a S8 in the file...  duh?

If there is no ruleset 8, Sendmail will ignore that rule.

>Final note - is anyone aware of a program called [perhaps] 'ease' for use in
>generating config files?  I tried to look it up, but I don't see it anywhere
>in the indexes I've downloaded.

Ease is a language reminiscent of C that you can use to specify a sendmail.cf
file. The Ease program converts a file written in the Ease language into a
sendmail.cf that can be digested by Sendmail.

And now I wax religious:

I dislike Ease. That puts me into a minority. Learning an entire new language
just to keep one's mailer configured is ridiculous. Sendmail rules are simply
pattern match-and-replaces. The syntax involved is actually easy to learn.
The interactions between rulesets are also straightforward. The difficulty
lies in knowing, in excruciating step-by-step detail, every trifling little
action that must be taken to get Sendmail to deliver a message. Writing
one's configuration in a different format won't change that.

Ease is a waste of time.

If you remain unconvinced and want to try Ease yourself, it's available
from a comp.sources.unix archive. But it's still a waste of time.

Bill, the man from Xanth