From: tnp@invalid.invalid

On 01/02/2026 15:22, Lars Poulsen wrote:
> On Sat, 31 Jan 2026 21:22:20 -0000 (UTC), Lawrence D’Oliveiro wrote:
>>>> Maybe not what you want to hear, but perhaps this is a good time to give
>>>> up on Sendmail, and switch to a more rationally-designed MTA.
>
> On 01/02/2026 03:02, rbowman wrote:
>>> My memory of sendmail is it filled one of the thicker O'Reilly books all
>>> by itself.
>
> On 2026-02-01, The Natural Philosopher  wrote:
>> Indeed. And I owned it.
>> In the end it got so complicated that I rewrote sendmail.cf from scratch.
>> Got it down to about a page.
>>
>> All configuration went in half a dozen text files.
>> That was before encryption and authentication, though.
>
> Indeed, the cruft was in the retention of support for long obsolete
> features such as UUCP mail and address source-routing.
>
Ahem. We were the UKs biggest UUCP gateway at the time...
So a lot of that persisted BUT we inisisted on internet style address to
be used as returns.


> And as sendmail.cf became entirely too unwieldy, they "solved" it
> my adding a completely different "high-level" configuration language
> in the form of M4 with option names that were similar to the ones
> in sendmail itself, but spelled slightly differently.
> I never got the hang of writing in sendmail.mc, preferring to hand
> edit sendmail.cf, but only in areas where I needed to (which
> were very rarely needed and confined to a single line at a time.
>
Exactly. Like so many clever solutions its is quicker to rewrite and
simplify than to learn the new tools...

> So when I needed to look more closely, I now had to explore the M4
> and rebuild the CF file.
>
> Postfix also has a lot of possible configuration, but it was
> surprisingly easy to get a basic configuration up and running.
>
> At this point, I would suggest that anyone still running sendmail
> on a workstation take the tie to bring up postfix at a time when things
> are working well, so that the challenge of learning postfix is not
> layered on to of time-critical debugging when something fails.
>
Most people use exim but it barfed all over me last time so I threw in
postfix which JustWorked™


--
It’s easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled.
Mark Twain

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
 * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)