Sendmail/iX for HP 3000 MPE

The mail transport agent that comes bundled with HPUX is now available for MPE
Last updated March 29, 2001 @ 2230 UTC
  1. What's New
  2. Welcome
  3. What is Sendmail?
  4. System Requirements
  5. How to Obtain Sendmail/iX
  6. Distribution Contents
  7. How to Compile
  8. How to Configure
  9. How to Run
  10. MPE/iX Implementation Considerations
  11. Known Issues Under Investigation
  12. To-Do List
  13. Change History


What's New


Welcome

This is the official home page for the HP 3000 MPE port of the Sendmail mail transport agent from //sendmail.org/ (a commercial version of sendmail is available from //sendmail.com/). This distribution also contains a port of the Majordomo mailing list system from //greatcircle.com/majordomo/. Check here for the latest news, implemented functionality, known bugs, to-do list, etc. Status reports about major milestones will also be posted to the HP3000-L mailing list and its associated gatewayed newsgroup comp.sys.hp.mpe.

I did this port because I wanted to be able to send reliable e-mail from batch jobs and Apache web server CGI applications. I chose Sendmail because it's free, and also because it's what I run on Unix machines.

Please send your comments, questions, and bug reports directly to me, Mark Bixby, by e-mailing to mark@bixby.org. Or just post them to HP3000-L.

The platform I used to do this port is an HP 3000 957RX running MPE/iX 6.0 and using the GNU gcc C compiler.

The combined porting wisdom from all of my ports can be found in my MPE/iX Porting Guide.


What is Sendmail?

Sendmail is a mail transport agent (MTA) that does two things: Sendmail IS NOT a mail user agent (MUA) and does not have the ability to compose or read e-mail. The only MUA that comes bundled with MPE at the current time is /bin/mailx (aka MAILX.HPBIN.SYS). Mailx is not fancy, but offers enough functionality to be useful in many situations such as sending e-mail from batch jobs.

Sendmail IS NOT a POP3 server that will enable network clients such as Netscape Communicator or Microsoft Internet Explorer to access your Sendmail/iX mailboxes. However, a port of Qualcomm's QPopper is available from ftp://ftp.nha.co.za/hp3000/pop3/ if you want to provide this type of access.


System Requirements


How to Obtain Sendmail/iX

  1. Download the main Sendmail distribution and any patches using either FTP.ARPA.SYS or some other client
  2. Extract the installation script
  3. Edit the installation script
  4. Run the installation script
  5. Install the patch

Download Sendmail using FTP.ARPA.SYS from your HP 3000 (the preferred method).....

:HELLO MANAGER.SYS
:XEQ FTP.ARPA.SYS
open ftp.bixby.org
anonymous
your@email.address
bytestream
cd /pub/mpe
get sendmail-8.9.1-mpe.tar.Z /tmp/sendmail.tar.Z
get sendmail-8.9.1-mpe-patch1.tar.Z /tmp/sendmail-patch.tar.Z
exit

.....Or download using some other generic web or ftp client (the alternate method)

Download the following files (make sure that you use "binary mode" or whatever client feature that is 8-bit clean): Upload those files to your HP 3000 in an 8-bit clean bytestream manner to:

Then extract the installation script (after both download methods)

:CHDIR /tmp
:XEQ TAR.HPBIN.SYS 'xvfopz /tmp/sendmail.tar.Z INSTALL'

Edit the installation script

Examine the accounting structure creation commands and modify if necessary (adding additional capabilities, choosing a non-system volume set, etc).
:XEQ VI.HPBIN.SYS /tmp/INSTALL

Run the installation script

The accounting structure will be created and then all files will be extracted from the archive.
:XEQ SH.HPBIN.SYS /tmp/INSTALL

Install the patch

These instructions assume that you have installed the tar patch MPELX37A on 6.0 or MPELX37B on 6.5 to fix a number of bugs, one of which will result in /SENDMAIL/PUB/SENDMAIL being corrupted. These tar fixes are included in 7.0 mainline.

If you DO NOT have these tar fixes, please :PURGE /SENDMAIL/PUB/SENDMAIL before following the instructions below.

:HELLO MANAGER.SYS
:CHDIR /SENDMAIL/PUB
:XEQ TAR.HPBIN.SYS 'xvfopz /tmp/sendmail-patch.tar.Z'
:XEQ CHOWN.HPBIN.SYS 'MGR.SENDMAIL:SENDMAIL SENDMAIL'
:XEQ CHMOD.HPBIN.SYS '755 SENDMAIL'


Distribution Contents

README
this file
DAEMON
POSIX shell script used to invoke the sendmail daemon
INSTALL
POSIX shell script used to create the accounting structure and extract all files from the archive
JDAEMON
:STREAM this job to run the sendmail daemon
SENDMAIL
The main sendmail NMPRG
WRAPPER
The majordomo wrapper NMPRG
bin/
Miscellaneous NMPRGs as well as symbolic links to the main sendmail NMPRG
db.1.85-mpe/
The Berkeley DB 1.85 database routines source tree used by sendmail alias files
etc/
Various run-time files including the sendmail.cf configuration file
lib/
Libraries required to compile sendmail
m4-1.4-mpe/
The GNU m4 macro processor source tree used to generate sendmail.cf
majordo-1.94.4-m/
The majordomo mailing list server source tree
majordomo/
The majordomo run-time tree
man/
Miscellaneous documentation
mqueue/
The sendmail run-time mail queue
sendmail-8.9.1-m/
The sendmail source tree


How to Compile

Berkeley DB 1.85 database routines

  1. cd db.1.85-mpe/PORT/mpe
  2. make
  3. make install

GNU m4 macro processor

  1. cd m4-1.4-mpe
  2. ./configure.MPE
  3. make
  4. cd src; make install

Majordomo mailing list server

  1. Obtain and install Perl/iX
  2. cd majordo-1.94.4-m
  3. make wrapper
  4. make install
  5. make install-wrapper

Sendmail

  1. Obtain and install Syslog/iX (or use the version that comes bundled with MPE/iX 6.0 or later)
  2. Obtain and install BIND/iX (or use the version that comes bundled with MPE/iX 6.0 or later)
  3. cd sendmail-8.9.1-m/src
  4. makesendmail
  5. makesendmail install


How to Configure

Modify various HP files

  1. :HELLO MANAGER.SYS
  2. Add a smtp 25/tcp entry to the file SERVICES.NET.SYS if such an entry doesn't already exist. Verify that /etc/services exists as a symbolic link which points to /SYS/NET/SERVICES.
  3. Edit /etc/mailx.rc to say set sendmail=/SENDMAIL/PUB/SENDMAIL.

Majordomo

  1. :HELLO MGR.SENDMAIL
  2. Edit majordomo/majordomo.cf to specify the value of $whereami.
  3. Read the documentation in majordo-1.94.4-m/ before attempting to create a new mailing list
  4. Edit etc/majordomo.aliases to add the many aliases required if you want to create your own mailing list.
  5. Run /SENDMAIL/PUB/bin/newaliases from SH.HPBIN.SYS to rebuild the alias databases

Sendmail 8.9.1

  1. :HELLO MGR.SENDMAIL
  2. :XEQ SH.HPBIN.SYS -L
  3. cd sendmail-8.9.1-m/cf
  4. Edit ostype/mpeix.m4 if you wish to change the operating system default macros, and domain/mpeix.m4 if you wish to change the domain default macros, and cf/generic-mpeix.mc if you wish to change the machine default macros. Note that these macros will be expanded to generate the actual runtime configuration file /etc/sendmail.cf; direct editing of /etc/sendmail.cf is STRONGLY DISCOURAGED if you wish to remain upward compatible with future versions of sendmail.
  5. cd cf
  6. Expand the macros to generate a temporary copy of the runtime configuration file:

  7. /SENDMAIL/PUB/bin/m4 ../m4/cf.m4 generic-mpeix.mc >mpeix.cf
  8. :HELLO MANAGER.SYS
  9. :XEQ SH.HPBIN.SYS -L
  10. Copy the configuration file to the actual runtime location:

  11. cp /SENDMAIL/PUB/sendmail-8.9.1-m/cf/cf/mpeix.cf /etc/sendmail.cf
  12. chown SERVER.SENDMAIL /etc/sendmail.cf
  13. :HELLO MGR.SENDMAIL
  14. Edit etc/aliases if you wish to create additional aliases besides the default aliases of postmaster and MAILER-DAEMON which map to MGR.SENDMAIL
  15. Run /SENDMAIL/PUB/bin/newaliases from SH.HPBIN.SYS to rebuild the alias databases


How to Run

Majordomo

Majordomo is automatically run by Sendmail whenever e-mail is sent to the special addresses contained in etc/majordomo.aliases.

Sendmail

  1. :STREAM JDAEMON.PUB.SENDMAIL to start the daemon
  2. :ABORTJOB to stop the daemon
  3. Run /SENDMAIL/PUB/bin/newaliases from SH.HPBIN.SYS to rebuild the alias databases
  4. Run /SENDMAIL/PUB/bin/mailq from SH.HPBIN.SYS to display the mail queue

Sending E-mail

Reading E-mail

A Programmatic Example

See mailspf.ci for a CI command file that uses sendmail to e-mail spoolfiles as MIME attachments.


MPE/iX Implementation Considerations

There some minor functionality issues to be aware of when comparing Sendmail for Unix (Sendmail/UX) to Sendmail/iX:


Known Issues Under Investigation


To-Do List


Change History


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