Links to e-mail related informations

Last Update 2002-09-24

Content and links to other pages

Answers to the most frequently asked questions and some hints about sendmail configuration.
A first Guide for e-mail installation (draft)
There are several instructions how to configure sendmail for dial up systems:
- Dialup HowTo
- Donncha O Caoimh wrote an install program to configure sendmail and fetchmail: It's perfect for the dial up user who queues his mail and then delivers it when he goes online, either through his ISP or directly from his machine. It can also be useful in configuring a network server as it asks the user about their network and then builds /etc/mail/access.db. Besides that, it has some support for genericsdomain, virtualusertable, smart host and fetchmail. This Perl script can be used to setup a mail server for a simple network or it can configure email on a dial up machine. All you need to know is your email address, login name and password and optionally, the IP addresses of your network."
Virtual Hosting with sendmail
Other often asked questions about sendmail
For example:
- How do I add a footer/signature to all (outgoing) mail?
- How to queue mail for another domain?
Use the check_* rulesets of sendmail 8.8 to prevent misuse of your mail server. sendmail 8.9 has standard FEATUREs to this effect. Some related articles are:
There are many initiatives against UBE on the internet. Some proposals to reject spam are bad ideas.

Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide for sendmail 8.12, 8.11, 8.10, 8.9, 8.8 (8.7). These are HTML versions of the documentation from the sendmail distribution. There are also copies in PostScript and plain text format (gzip'ed) for: 8.12: PS, text, 8.11: PS, text, 8.10: PS, text, 8.9: PostScript (160KB), text (84KB), 8.8: PostScript (160KB), text (84KB), available (the PostScript versions are part of the sendmail distribution.)
A PDF version of the Sendmail Installation and Operation Guide is available for 8.11 courtesy of Willem Jaap Zwart.
Andreas Amann made an HTML version of cf/README (8.12.4).
The man page for sendmail is another online copy from the distribution.
Most files from the doc subdirectory of the sendmail distribution have been removed from sendmail 8.10
- doc/intro: SENDMAIL - An Internetwork Mail Router (PostScript)
- doc/changes: Changes in Sendmail Version 8*
- doc/usenix: Mail Systems and Addressing in 4.2bsd (PostScript)
FAQ for sendmail (original version at sendmail.org). (old version of the FAQ for sendmail V8 (html-ized version, not fully correct, but it is a start).)
The README file from sendmail/cf for 8.9, 8.8, and 8.7. You should read that if you want to generate a configuration file from the m4 macros.

``Sendmail V8: A (Smoother) Engine Powers Network Email'' by Richard Reich
Flow of addresses through the rewrite rules in sendmail 8.8; an attempt to explain the flow of addresses supplied to sendmail through the various rewrite rulesets.
Advanced Systems - December 1993 - Column: SysAdmin An article by Hal Stern about sendmail.cf: classes, macros, rewriting, etc.
Have you had your e-mail today?
This article is a survey of current mail terms, standards, and technology. It also overviews future messaging products from several companies.

Finally there is a book about sendmail Performance Tuning available, written by Nick Christenson.
The probably best book about sendmail up to now is: Costales, Allman, and Rickert: "Sendmail" ; O'Reilly + Associates . It describes sendmail versions up to V8.6.
The 2nd Edition also covers sendmail V8.8.
Another book about sendmail is Sendmail: Theory and Practice. But this does not include sendmail V8!

The Canonical Internet vs X.400 Debate
RFC 822 und X.400 - Mails von A nach B (german)
X.500 is a directory service. Here are some WWW based access points:
- AMBIX (for Germany, DFN)
- X.500 (DE)

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Disclaimer: the information provided may be inaccurate or outdated or incomplete. Please contact me if you find an error.