SUMMARY: 'bogus' (?) sendmail errors after patching Solaris 7 box

From: <gene.g.beaird_at_mail.sprint.com>
Date: Fri Sep 14 2001 - 17:34:15 EDT
Well, I think we got it fixed.  Thanks go to those who replied, 
especially;

Mr. L. Parkins,
Tim Gallagher 
Bertrand Hutin

And yes, I did have the O'Reilly book, that that went with the previous 
administrator.  I have an arrand to run this weekend!

I think the problem we experienced was a combination of issues that was 
finally triggered by the patch add.  Part of the problem may have been 
that the patches updates sendmail with Sun's version of sendmail, which 
replaced an old copy from sendmail.org.  The patch packages may also 
have done some SUID operations on some directories or files that caused 
Sendmail to not be able to write to certain directories.  That, with 
the Smarthost relay and the actual domain being misconfigured after the 
patches, I think, caused my errors.  

While the error message was not very helpful, looking at the messages 
stacking up in /var/spool/mqueue indicated that the server wasn't able 
to find our smtp server.  

Using the Smarthost and domain information we had from another mail 
server, and setting the group to mail on /var/tmp/dead.letter seemed to 
fix things.  I have monitored the messages file on this machine for a 
couple of hours now, and no sendmail panic messages.  Thanks to all.

Here are some informational links and other bits that were recommended 
by the respondants;

Sendmail, 2d Ed. (O'Reilly Bat Book) - get it, even if you only have to 
reference it once or twice a year.

www.google.com - I forgot completely about doing a Google search - 
(thanks, Tim)

Sendmail.org - http://www.sendmail.org/ - the next best thing to having 
the 'Bat Book' on your desk.  

Gene Beaird
-----Original Message----- 
From: gene.g.beaird@mail.sprint.com 
[mailto:gene.g.beaird@mail.sprint.com] 
Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 10:30 AM 
To: sunmanagers@sunmanagers.org 
Subject: 'bogus' (?) sendmail errors after patching Solaris 7 box 
We recently instlled the 7_Recommended to one of our servers that runs 
sendmail.  This is the first (to my knowledge) set of patches this 
system has had since being setup.  The machine does important 
enterprise operations, and others didn't want to mess with it (don't 
poke a skunk with a stick, they said) for fear of breaking something.  
I felt it was more important to get security patches up-to-date on this 
system, and that we could fix what broke, or backout.  
Anyway, after installing the patches and rebooting, the machine is 
posting the following messages in /var/adm/messages; 
<servername> sendmail[3428]: f8EGBxF03428: SYSERR(root): savemail: 
cannot save rejected email anywhere: No such file or directory 
<servername> sendmail[3428]: f8EGBxF03428: Losing ./qff8EGBxF03428: 
savemail panic 
We went from sendmail v.8.9.1 configuration file to v.8.10.2.  I have 
been looking on the sendmail.org site and in SunSolve, but the only 
reference to any of these messages have been found in the Sendmail 8.12 
release notes: 
"Avoid bogus error text when logging the savemail panic "cannot 
                save rejected email anywhere".  Problem noted by Marc 
G. 
                Fournier of Acadia University." 
If these messages are indeed bogus, I will just ignore them.  If there 
is a way I can fix sendmail so it doesn't return this error, I would 
like to do so.  I don't really want to go to Sendmail 8.12, as again, I 
am not certain what previous administrators have done on this machine 
(they left SO many pages of documentation).  If necessary, I will fall 
back to the older version, but since things seem to be running mostly 
okay, I would like to stick with what I have.  
I will continue my search, but if any of you admins and managers have 
any pointers, I would sure like to read them.  Thank you for your help. 
Gene Beaird 
Systems Integrator V 
Sprint E|Solutions 
Houston, Texas 
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Received on Fri Sep 14 22:34:15 2001

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