[KLUG Members] using sendmail to block spam

[Robert G. Brown]

Adam Bultman <adamb@glaven.org> wrote:
>> > http://www.sdsc.edu/~jeff/spam/Sendmail.html
>> > Is the patch legit?  If so, how would it be applied? 
>> From what I saw, it's not really a patch, just info to add to your MC file 
>> that is just a bunch of rbl blacklists. 
I don't know about "just". This stuff is very version-sensitive. IMO if you're
not running this EXACT version of sendmail, you're on the express train to no
mail-server city, unless you're VERY careful.

Bruce Smith <bruce@armintl.com> wrote:
>>From the web page:
>  "First apply _this_patch_ to the source."
>Where "this patch" is a link to:  
>  http://www.sdsc.edu/~jeff/spam/sendmail-8.11.6.patch
>Which looks like a source code patch to me.
They're patching a lot of .m4 files. I don't see anything that looks
like an actual patch that requires a rebuild, although that's faintly
possible. Note my cautionary lines above, and below.

Please take heed of what this guy does for a living, he's a full-time network
admin at a supercomputing center. a lot of them LIVE by email, a lot of work
is submitted to supercomputers over e-mail. Also not that he is incorporating
stuff from YEARS of experience; he may be more experienced than ANYONE on this 
list when it comes to sendmail (unless a certain Mr. Allamn is a subscriber).
I would not touch this with a ten foot pole unless I was running the same 
version, any would not have high expectations of getting it all to work ringht
even on a slightly different version, without a lot of careful comparison
and understanding or rule-writing, etc.

I have configured sendmail to run a number of e-mail servers and have from 
time to time incorporated fragments of of m4 code in .mc files, then rebuilt
with:

m4 whatevername.mc > sendmail.cf, 

and moving it to where the old sendmail.cf was (and moving the old sendmail.cf 
FIRST, so I could step back in case there was some serious problem). Restart-
ingsendmail then makes the configuration changes effective.

							Regards,
							---> RGB <---