[KLUG Members] using sendmail to block spam

[Robert G. Brown]

>>2. Admittedly, he's not touching source. What he is doing is patching
>>   up .m4 files a LOT more deeply than merely adding or modifying a few
>>   fairly simple declaritive macros in sendmail.mc
>Whether he is touching true "source" or not, this really seems a brute
>force way to go about it that could easily have unintended
>consequences.  m4 is a macro language,  one can include other m4 files,
>etc... Adding feature declarations and such is possible without
>modifying the core package.  There are lots of rules about for
>filtering, chunking headers, etc...  
Yeah, this is my general impression as well. I don't know enough about 
M4 to comment on his patches, why he puts them where he has, or what
added value he sees from making changes of this depth. Given the added 
burden of porting these changes forward when a new release comes out,
I would think a pretty compelling case would have to be made for doing
it this way, and not some other, probably more supportable way.

>And 8.12.x fixes many problems, adds new features,  to bother with a
>hacked (to whatever degree) 8.11.x version.  Of course, if could be that
>many of his changes are actually in 8.12.x by default.
I doubt it. It looks like his stuff is pretty much attuned to anti-spam
features, 8.12.x fixes a lot of other things in addition, and seems to 
relegate this ti featrures in sendmail.mc and milters.
....
>...8.12.x helps quite a bit with the vague local/remote distinction;
>which even after years admin-ing sendmail still seems hard to define.
It was easier to read about and configure 8.12.5 then previously, I don't
know if I'm getting used to it or if it's really better. It couldn't be
worse, and I'm learning to reverse the sense ofthings if they don't work 
right.

>The documentation is pretty bad.  And the example sample configs could
>use a great deal of updating and additional comments.
I think it hurts less now than it used to. M4 does help -- a lot. Also,
I've done enough of these so that I know what to modify, and why... unitl
the next release! :)
							Regards,
							---> RGB <---