Installing and Administering Internet Services

Chapter 4 123

Installing and Administering sendmail

Installing sendmail

The sendmail installation script performs the conﬁguration changes

that are described in “Installing sendmail on a Standalone System” on

page 121. To set the system up as an NFS server and allow the

sendmail clients to read and write to the /var/mail directory, do the

following:

1. Make sure all mail users have accounts on the mail server and that

their user IDs and group IDs on the mail server are the same as on

the client machines. (This step is not necessary if you are using NIS

or NIS+ and your mail server is in the same NIS or NIS+ domain as

the clients.)

2. In the /etc/rc.config.d/nfsconf ﬁle, use a text editor to set the

NFS_SERVER variable to 1.

3. Use a text editor to add the following line to the /etc/exports ﬁle:

/var/mail -access=client,client...

where each mail client is listed in the access list. If the

/etc/exports ﬁle does not exist, you will have to create it.

4. Issue the following command to run the NFS startup script:

/sbin/init.d/nfs.server start

For more information on NFS, see Installing and Administering NFS

Services.

Installing sendmail on a Mail Client

sendmail clients do not receive mail on their local system; instead,

users on the client systems obtain their mail on the mail server. User

mail directories reside on the server, and users read their mail over an

NFS link. By default, a sendmail client forwards to the server any local

mail (a user address destined for the client system) and sends non-local

mail directly to the destination system or MX host. Outgoing mail

appears to originate from the server, so replies are sent to the server. For

more information on how sendmail clients and servers work, see

“Default Client-Server Operation” on page 142. sendmail clients can be

diskless systems.

To conﬁgure a sendmail client system to access a sendmail server: