Re: Migration headaches - SendMail

Captain Dondo wrote:

> I think when I catch my breath I'll file a bug report with the amd64
> sendmail maintaner.

Good luck. The Debian sendmail maintainer doesn't respond
to my (admittedly undiplomatic) bug reports.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=386459
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=398835
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343614

I have no idea what he's thinking. I keep meaning to package
Sendmail for Debian myself and not include all the brokenness
that comes with stock Debian, but haven't had time yet...

Regards,

David.

"David F. Skoll" <dfs@roaringpenguin.com> writes:

> Captain Dondo wrote:
>
>> I think when I catch my breath I'll file a bug report with the amd64
>> sendmail maintaner.
>
> Good luck. The Debian sendmail maintainer doesn't respond
> to my (admittedly undiplomatic) bug reports.
>
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=386459
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=398835
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343614
>
> I have no idea what he's thinking. I keep meaning to package
> Sendmail for Debian myself and not include all the brokenness
> that comes with stock Debian, but haven't had time yet...
>
> Regards,

I wish you doing it.
"Debianization" of sendmail.deb have gone too far (IMHO).
It is sad because debian comes with packages of all that is needed to
medium mail site.
[sendmail (and other MTA), mimedefang (universal milter),spamassassin
(anti spam), clamav (anti virus), dcc,pyzor,razor2 (bulk mail
detectors), a few pop/imap to choose from (I use cyrus-imap)]

For me option for relatively speedy change of Linux distribution is
*important*. I do not wish to be "locked" into any particular distribution.

--
[pl2en: Andrew] Andrzej Adam Filip : anfi@priv.onet.pl : anfi@xl.wp.pl
Before You Ask: http://anfi.homeunix.net/sendmail/B4UAsk-Sendmail.html
http://anfi.homeunix.net/sendmail/

Andrzej Adam Filip wrote:
>
> I wish you doing it.
> "Debianization" of sendmail.deb have gone too far (IMHO).
> It is sad because debian comes with packages of all that is needed to
> medium mail site.
> [sendmail (and other MTA), mimedefang (universal milter),spamassassin
> (anti spam), clamav (anti virus), dcc,pyzor,razor2 (bulk mail
> detectors), a few pop/imap to choose from (I use cyrus-imap)]
>
> For me option for relatively speedy change of Linux distribution is
> *important*. I do not wish to be "locked" into any particular distribution.
>

Yes. I agree. After this experience, I am thinking of going back to
building from source; sometimes I think the maintainers get feature-itis
and try to pack too much stuff into a package. The big advantage of
packages is easy updates; I don't think I could update without breaking
my setup so there is no point to using a package.

Most small-medium mail servers will use a near-default setup. The only
thing I do a bit differently from the above is that I use dspam instead
of spamassasin, and I use amavis to run clamav. I also have a couple of
other minor milters, and I use dnsbls quite a bit.

Nothing fancy or difficult to handle.

A big site will build from source; people like me should be able to just
tweak the mc file a bit and get going.

I shouldn't have to spend a day going through directory permissions and
reading logfiles to figure out where stuff broke...

--Yan

On 12/05/06 18:08, CptDondo wrote:
> I shouldn't have to spend a day going through directory permissions and
> reading logfiles to figure out where stuff broke...

Wow. I guess I'm one of those rare people that has compiled from source
from the get go.

Once I have Sendmail on a box for the first time, which takes about 2 hours,
I can do an upgrade in less than an hour. Copy your dev/Site and cf/*/<add
on files> to the new source tree, refresh your mc file, ./Build,
../Build-install the features you want. Then you just kill and restart
Sendmail. There is not much to it all. It has almost gotten to the point
that I have considered scripting the entire process. I have about 6 systems
that I maintain Sendmail on and by the time I'm on the 4th one, I know how
well, or bad, the upgrade will go and it usually takes about 20 minutes
including the time to download the source code.



Grant. . . .

CptDondo wrote:

> Yes. I agree. After this experience, I am thinking of going back to
> building from source; sometimes I think the maintainers get feature-itis
> and try to pack too much stuff into a package.

Feature-itis I could live with, but the Debian Sendmail package is so
bizarre, so twisted, so incomprehensible and so broken that I'm sure
it's turned many Debian users off of Sendmail (and in fact reinforced
some of the negative Sendmail stereotypes.) For example, the
maintainer has a Makefile that regenerates itself on a whim, and calls
up almost 4,000 lines of Perl code [worse yet, Perl code written in
Perl 4 style] to parse sendmail.mc (!!) to modify the Makefile.

Another example: The Sendmail startup script (/etc/init.d/sendmail)
on Debian is 1226 lines of shell! And if you want to weep, read the
clean_queues shell function in that file. It really belongs on
http://www.thedailywtf.com/

> The big advantage of
> packages is easy updates; I don't think I could update without breaking
> my setup so there is no point to using a package.

On our main server, I install all the important stuff from source.
It's running an old version of Linux (FC1 - it works and I don't
want to mess with 778 days of uptime.) What I do is write small shell
scripts that configure and build the packages I care about. Usually,
to upgrade to a new release, I just change the VERSION=xxx setting in my
shell script and rebuild, knowing that I'll get all the right configuration
options.

It's a bit of work at first, and not practical if you have to manage a
number of servers, but it's a great way to keep one server up-to-date
painlessly.

Regards,

David.

David F. Skoll wrote:
> Captain Dondo wrote:
>
> > I think when I catch my breath I'll file a bug report with the amd64
> > sendmail maintaner.
>
> Good luck. The Debian sendmail maintainer doesn't respond
> to my (admittedly undiplomatic) bug reports.
>
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=386459
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=398835
> http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343614

Your problems would be best fixed with a new init script and by running
a seperate queue msp daemon configurable in sendmail.conf.

init scripts are marked as config items so that it wont be arbitrarily
overwritten.


>
> I have no idea what he's thinking. I keep meaning to package
> Sendmail for Debian myself and not include all the brokenness
> that comes with stock Debian

I havent had much problem taking the debian package and repackaging it
with my patches loaded -- the patch system is bizarre, but thats
because its old. Easily worked around with by sed.

I did have a problem when he stopped including the config.ac file
(where all the _FFR_ are defined), but he supplied one and changed it
back after some communication. Very helpfull.


>but haven't had time yet...

The debian package includes a *lot* of support for site specific
customization while rebuilding the package.

"David F. Skoll" <dfs@roaringpenguin.com> writes:

> CptDondo wrote:
>> [...]
>> The big advantage of
>> packages is easy updates; I don't think I could update without breaking
>> my setup so there is no point to using a package.
>
> On our main server, I install all the important stuff from source.
> It's running an old version of Linux (FC1 - it works and I don't
> want to mess with 778 days of uptime.) What I do is write small shell
> scripts that configure and build the packages I care about. Usually,
> to upgrade to a new release, I just change the VERSION=xxx setting in my
> shell script and rebuild, knowing that I'll get all the right configuration
> options.
>
> It's a bit of work at first, and not practical if you have to manage a
> number of servers, but it's a great way to keep one server up-to-date
> painlessly.

I would recommend compilation from sources of sendmail (an other mail
related packages) *only for medium+ sites*. It is a great idea but
consuming too much time for too many sites.
[It may create "your site specific" problems]

For small and medium- using packed version saves a lot of time and may
protect against "OS release specific" problems. I would really appreciate
keeping packed sendmail close to "general version".

You may tackle "the problem" from the other side and donate sendmail.org
files required for producing OS/release specific source packages.
["spec file"+"shell script"]

--
[pl2en: Andrew] Andrzej Adam Filip : anfi@priv.onet.pl : anfi@xl.wp.pl
Before You Ask: http://anfi.homeunix.net/sendmail/B4UAsk-Sendmail.html
http://anfi.homeunix.net/sendmail/

In comp.mail.sendmail Andrzej Adam Filip <anfi@onet.eu>:
> "David F. Skoll" <dfs@roaringpenguin.com> writes:
[ migrating sendmail ]

>> It's a bit of work at first, and not practical if you have to manage a
>> number of servers, but it's a great way to keep one server up-to-date
>> painlessly.

> I would recommend compilation from sources of sendmail (an other mail
> related packages) *only for medium+ sites*. It is a great idea but
> consuming too much time for too many sites.
> [It may create "your site specific" problems]

The problem with self compiled stuff, you need to keep track on
your own about security/bug fixes, while those are automatically
included with distro updates. This can be quite some work,
depending on the number of systems. Going with distro provided
stuff eases up keeping things up to date tremendously.

I'd only go for a self compiled version if you need some features
you will not get with the distro version and don't really need
support, even if just for legal reasons.

> For small and medium- using packed version saves a lot of time and may
> protect against "OS release specific" problems. I would really appreciate
> keeping packed sendmail close to "general version".

> You may tackle "the problem" from the other side and donate sendmail.org
> files required for producing OS/release specific source packages.
> ["spec file"+"shell script"]

Had zero problems moving sendmail installations (older version)
on *BSD to more recent versions running Linux, using the distro
supplied sendmail version. In fact migrating sendmail was the
most easiest part, moving relevant parts from .mc used on *BSD to
the distro (RHEL) supplied .mc and rebuilding sendmail.cf was
extremely straight forward and a matter of minutes.;-)

--
Michael Heiming (X-PGP-Sig > GPG-Key ID: EDD27B94)
mail: echo zvpunry@urvzvat.qr | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
#bofh excuse 35: working as designed

On Tue, 05 Dec 2006 18:20:11 -0500, "David F. Skoll"
<dfs@roaringpenguin.com> wrote:

>Good luck. The Debian sendmail maintainer doesn't respond
>to my (admittedly undiplomatic) bug reports.

>http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343614

><rant>
>The Debian packaging of Sendmail is a huge flaming mess.
></rant>

I can't disagree.

John Bolton would be proud.