Newsgroups: comp.mail.sendmail
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From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Subject: Re: aliases database
Message-ID: <1991Mar28.005419.24784@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
References: <929@airgun.wg.waii.com>
Date: Thu, 28 Mar 1991 00:54:19 GMT
Lines: 40

In article <929@airgun.wg.waii.com> cevert@airgun.wg.waii.com (Christopher C. Evert) writes:
>I am installing sendmail v5.65 + IDA 1.4.2 on an IBM RT and I want to take
>advantage of xalparse to generate my aliases and genericfrom databases.
>I used ida/lib/xaliases as the model for my xaliases file and generated
>what to me looked like a good aliases file, but when I ran
>sendmail -bi, it complained about `@'s in the left hand side.

 Using aliases with an '@' is tricky as it technically violates a design
assumption of sendmail.  In IDA-1.4.2, and all earlier versions,
the basic method was to create a separate 'sendmail.cf' - usually called
'newaliases.cf' which is created with the NEWALIASES keyword defined in the
M4 sources.

 Since then there have been several changes and improvements.

 I strongly recommend you pick up the 1.4.3 configuration package.  If you
have access to 'rcs', you can pick up the rcs archive from
mp.cs.niu.edu:/pub/cf which contains both 1.4.2 and 1.4.3, together with
some experimental versions (1.4.3.7 is the latest).

 With the new versions the aliases source file requires slightly different
formatting for addresses with an '@' on the left of the alias.  There is a
shell script 'xalparse.sh' in the same directory which converts the output
of xalparse into the required form.  Or if you wan to experiment, I will
soon put a revised experimental version of xalparse.c in that same directory.

>So, I tried to get ida/aux/dbm to generate the .pag and .dir file.

 I am not sure whether this works or not.  But you would have to use the
dbm parameter to add the @: @ marker at the end.  Otherwise 'sendmail' will
assume the database is being rebuild by another process, and will wait for it.
After the wait times out, it probably refuses to use what it assumes to be
an incomplete database.  (It probably complains in your syslog files too).


-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940
