HP-UX Mailing Services Administrator's Guide (B2355-91064)

NOTE: HP recommends that you use Sendmail with the BIND name server. The

BIND name server must have a mail exchanger (MX) record for every host in every

domain that it serves. For more information on how Sendmail uses MX records, see

“Mail Exchanger (MX) Records” (page 27).

Configuring Sendmail on a Standalone System

When Sendmail is installed, it is automatically configured to send and receive mail

messages for users on the local system only. The standalone system processes all

outbound mail and establishes connections to the message destination host or to the

MX hosts. Because the Sendmail daemon is invoked automatically when a system is

rebooted, no system files need to be modified.

The installation script makes the following configuration changes:

• Sets the SENDMAIL_SERVER variable in the /etc/rc.config.d/mailservs

file to 1. This ensures that the Sendmail daemon is started whenever you reboot

your system or run the Sendmail startup script.

• Creates /etc/mail/sendmail.cf and /etc/mail/aliases files with default

configurations. These files are created with root as the owner and other as the

group. The permission for /etc/mail/aliases and /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

is set to 0640 and 0444, respectively.

NOTE: If the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file already exists, the existing file is

saved to /etc/mail/#sendmail. If the /etc/mail/aliases file already exists,

the Sendmail installation script does not recreate the aliases file.

• Creates the /etc/mail/sendmail.cw file that contains the host name and the

fully qualified host name for the system. For example, the system dog in the domain

hp.com contains the following entries in the sendmail.cw file:

dog

dog.hp.com

• Finally, the installation script issues the following command to run the Sendmail

startup script:

/sbin/init.d/sendmail start

The Sendmail startup script generates the aliases database from the

/etc/mail/aliases source file. The generated database is located in the

/etc/mail/aliases.db file.

38 Configuring and Administering Sendmail