hi thomas, thanks for your reply. Thomas Woerner <twoerner@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > at the moment you are using a copy of postfix and not sendmail. yes, i changed out of frustration. > First of all: Why is /usr/sbin/sendmail a copy and not a soft-link? > alternatives generates soft-links. it is a soft link. notice i used -L in the examples. [12:09:43](1)rome:~$ ll /usr/sbin/sendmail* lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 21 Oct 22 22:45 /usr/sbin/sendmail -> /etc/alternatives/mta lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 Oct 22 23:09 /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim -> exim -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix -rwxr-sr-x 1 root smmsp 748296 Sep 1 03:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail [12:09:49](1)rome:~$ > Have you made this change by hand? nothing like changing owners/groups (i know better than that). below is what i did by hand. i repeated now. of course, with murphy presented itself, so now i don't see things changing. the only thing i can think of is that to get to a root prompt, i may have done just su, not su - or ssh into root. does simple su (without a login shell) have traces of the invoking user? in the trace below, i do what i did the other day. however, this time i have postfix as the alternative agent. how do i change the default mta to sendmail via a command line? (i usually do it via the applet thingie, but i am not using X at the moment - only remote shell in use.) [11:33:17](1)rome:~# ll -L /usr/sbin/sendmail* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 2089729 Sep 13 09:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix -rwxr-xr-x 1 cpg users 748296 Sep 1 03:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail [11:33:19](1)rome:~# rpm -q sendmail sendmail-8.13.1-2 [11:33:25](1)rome:~# [11:33:59](1)rome:~# rpm -e sendmail warning: /var/log/mail/statistics saved as /var/log/mail/statistics.rpmsave warning: /etc/mail/submit.cf saved as /etc/mail/submit.cf.rpmsave warning: /etc/mail/sendmail.mc saved as /etc/mail/sendmail.mc.rpmsave warning: /etc/mail/sendmail.cf saved as /etc/mail/sendmail.cf.rpmsave [11:34:07](1)rome:~# ll -L /usr/sbin/sendmail* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 2089729 Sep 13 09:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix [11:34:10](1)rome:~# [11:36:28](1)rome:~# rpm -Uvh /tmp/sendmail-8.13.1-2.x86_64.rpm warning: /tmp/sendmail-8.13.1-2.x86_64.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 30c9ecf8 Preparing... ########################################### [100%] 1:sendmail ########################################### [100%] [11:36:50](1)rome:~# ll -L /usr/sbin/sendmail* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 2089729 Sep 13 09:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix -rwxr-sr-x 1 root smmsp 748296 Sep 1 03:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail [11:37:06](1)rome:~# [11:37:06](1)rome:~# cd /etc/mail 11:48:56](1)rome:mail# cat my.diff --- sendmail.mc 2004-09-01 03:20:22.000000000 -0700 +++ sendmail.mc.rpmsave 2004-10-27 22:31:37.000000000 -0700 -dnl define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp.your.provider') +define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp.comcast.net') dnl # define(`confDEF_USER_ID',``8:12'')dnl dnl define(`confAUTO_REBUILD')dnl @@ -150,13 +150,14 @@ dnl # dnl # masquerade not just the headers, but the envelope as well dnl # -dnl FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl +FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl dnl # dnl # masquerade not just @mydomainalias.com, but @*.mydomainalias.com as well dnl # dnl FEATURE(masquerade_entire_domain)dnl dnl # -dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(localhost)dnl +MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(mydomain.com)dnl +MASQUERADE_AS(mydomain.com)dnl dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(localhost.localdomain)dnl dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(mydomainalias.com)dnl dnl MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(mydomain.lan)dnl [11:49:00](1)rome:mail# [11:49:34](1)rome:mail# patch -p0 < my.diff patching file sendmail.mc [11:49:43](1)rome:mail# make -C /etc/mail make: Entering directory `/etc/mail' make: Leaving directory `/etc/mail' [11:50:48](1)rome:mail# [11:53:55](1)rome:mail# ll -L /usr/sbin/sendmail* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 2089729 Sep 13 09:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix -rwxr-sr-x 1 root smmsp 748296 Sep 1 03:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail [11:54:00](1)rome:mail# reboot ... [12:11:11](1)rome:~$ ll -L /usr/sbin/sendmail* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail -rwsr-xr-x 1 root root 2089729 Sep 13 09:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.exim -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 141344 Aug 5 08:03 /usr/sbin/sendmail.postfix -rwxr-sr-x 1 root smmsp 748296 Sep 1 03:20 /usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail [12:11:14](1)rome:~$