* * * * *
                                        
                  Reason #98,333,323 why I hate control panels
                                        
[The following is a trouble ticket submitted by me into the Company Internal
Trouble Ticket Queue System™. It should be of no real surprise to anyone
here, but it still makes for decent blog fodder.]

I have the graylist sendmail module written, so I go to install it for the
XXXXXXXXXXXXX domain. The initial module does nothing but log the requests
and let the email through—I did the same for the postfix module [1] to ensure
that the module worked before hooking it up to the greylist daemon [2].

Anyway, I'm going to install the sendmail module for XXXXXXXXXXXXX.
XXXXXXXXXXXXX is on XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX, which is a box managed by Insipid.
Now, the instructions for installing the sendmail module are easy [3]—just
modify /etc/mail/sendmail.mc with the following lines:

> define(`_FFR_MILTER', `1')dnl.
> INPUT_MAIL_FILTER(`filter1', `S=unix:/tmp/milter')
> 

And run make in /etc/mail to generate the new sendmail.cf file. Fortunately
for us, I made a backup copy of both the sendmail.cf and sendmail.mc files.
So I do thusly. And then I compare the new sendmail.cf file with the one
supplied by Insipid.

> [root@XXXXXX ~]# cd /etc/mail
> [root@XXXXXX mail]# diff -y sendmail.cf sendmail.cf.milter
> 

(if you run that, make sure your terminal window is **W I D E**, since it
shows both versions side-by-side)

Lots o' differences.

And while I can merge the two, will an upgrade of Insipid break sendmail.cf?
What about our warranty? Or are we forever doomed to manually patch the
sendmail.cf file?

[1] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2007/09/04.1
[2] gopher://gopher.conman.org/0Phlog:2007/08/16.1
[3] http://www.sendmail.org/doc/sendmail-current/libmilter/docs/installation.html

Email Sean Conner at sean@conman.org

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