Re: sendmail -bi

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Author: Chris Thompson
Date:  
To: Philip Hazel
CC: nick, exim-users
Subject: Re: sendmail -bi
Nick Waterman writes:

> Having just gone beyond the point-of-no-return and installed exim on all
> of our machines INCLUDING our main mailhub...
>
> I now discover that the standard Sun YP makefile calls "sendmail -bi" as
> part of it's sequence. I now find I can't rebroadcast YP files because
> of this.
>
>      -bi            Initialize the alias database.

>
> Now admittedly I don't really NEED the aliases file to be broadcast over
> YP any more, but the standard "ypinit" stuff seems to set up a makefile
> that includes it.
>
> Any ideas, anyone?


The "right" think to do is to remove "aliases" from "all" in /var/yp/Makefile,
I think, and indeed to remove the NIS map itself. No need to to take too much
notice of Sun's warnings that you shouldn't modify the Makefile unless you
really know what you're doing...

--

Philip Hazel writes:

> Hack Exim to ignore "-bi". I will put something in the code. I already
> need to do something for AIX, which uses its own private "-x" option for
> something or other. I may add a compile-time option or something.


I don't think *ignoring* -bi is a good idea. The full call in the YP makefile
is

@/usr/lib/sendmail -bi -oA$(YPDBDIR)/$(DOM)/mail.aliases;

Or did you mean "make sendmail -bi a no-op", i.e. exit(0) immediately? I am
not sure I am too much happier with that.

While we are on the subject, Sun's sendmail assumes -bi if called via the
alias /usr/bin/newaliases. Whatever you do with -bi you should probably do
if argv[0] ends newaliases, similar to the existing "mailq" and "rsmtp" hacks.

Well, no-one ever said trying to take over the sendmail interface was easy...

Chris Thompson               Cambridge University Computing Service,
Email: cet1@???    New Museums Site, Cambridge CB2 3QG,
Phone: +44 1223 334715       United Kingdom.