Re: How does Majordomo submit mail?

[Daniel Liston <dliston @ sonny . org>]

Majordomo calls the sendmail binary directly, for outgoing/distributing
email, without using the network ports at all.  Here is another chunk
of majordomo.cf for your perusal...

# $sendmail_command -- Pathname to the sendmail program
#                      usually /usr/lib/sendmail, but some newer BSD systems
#                      seem to prefer /usr/sbin/sendmail
#
# $sendmail_command = "/usr/lib/sendmail";
$sendmail_command = "/usr/sbin/sendmail";

# $mailer -- What program and args do I use to send mail to the list?
# $bounce_mailer -- What is used to send mail anywhere else?
# The variables $to, $from, $subject, and $sender can be interpolated into
# this command line.  Note, however, that the $to, $from, and $subject
# variables may be provided by the person sending mail, and much mischief
# can be had by playing with this variable.  It is perfectly safe to use
# $sender, but the others are insecure.
#
# Sendmail option -oi:  Do not take a . on a line by itself as the message
#                       terminator.
# Sendmail option -oee: Force sendmail to exit with a zero exit status if
#                       if it's not going to give useful information.
#
$mailer = "$sendmail_command -oi -oee -f\$sender";
$bounce_mailer = "$sendmail_command -oi -oee -f\$sender -t";


Dan Liston

Stewart Dean wrote:

> There are two ways mail can come 'at' sendmail
> 1) it can appear at port 25
> 2) it can be processed from the mail queue
> 
> Normally, a mail message first shows up at port 25, then, if there's 
> delivery problems, it's put on the queue for later persistent attempts.
> The BatBook (3rd Ed. Section 6.2.1) suggests to have two sendmail 
> instances, one that watches port 25 and has very quick timeouts (so it 
> doesn't hang with delivery problem mail, but tosses them in the mail 
> queue) , another with normal long timeouts for processing the mail queue.
> 
> I've put this in place on our mailing list server, but then I got 
> wondering.  Does MD submit the mail directly to sendmail via port25 or 
> does it put the mail directly in the mail queue?  If so, my fast 
> processing, short timeout sendmail daemon listening on port 25  never 
> gets a chance at the mailing list...
> 
> Which is it?