Walking in Light with Christ - Faith, Computing, Diary Articles & tips and tricks on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, mobile phone articles, religious related texts http://www.pc-freak.net/blog Install Sendmail mail server on Debian GNU / Linux Author : admin Installing sendmail on Debian Linux is something not so common these days. As sendmail has been overshadowed by his competitors Exim and Postfix. By default Debian Linux comes with Exim (light) installed as Exim is tiny and perfectly suitable for dealing with small and mid-sized SMTP needs. The reason why sendmail has been moved out by its competitors over the last 15 years is sendmail configuration is one big hell and besides that sendmail has been well known for its many security remote exploit holes - making it a famous target for crackers. Well anyways in some cases sendmail is necessary to install especially if you have a client which wants to have it set up. In this short article I will show how very basic sendmail installation on Debian host is done. blackstar:~# apt-get install sendmail-bin sensible-mda Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following extra packages will be installed: sendmail-base sendmail-cf sensible-mda Suggested packages: sendmail-doc logcheck resolvconf sasl2-bin The following packages will be REMOVED: exim4 exim4-base exim4-config exim4-daemon-light sa-exim task-mail-server The following NEW packages will be installed: sendmail-base sendmail-bin sendmail-cf 0 upgraded, 3 newly installed, 6 to remove and 26 not upgraded. Need to get 1,626 kB of archives. After this operation, 592 kB disk space will be freed. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y Get:1 http://ftp.bg.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/main sendmail-base all 8.14.4-2.1 [362 kB] Get:2 http://ftp.bg.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/main sendmail-cf all 8.14.4-2.1 [300 kB] Get:3 http://ftp.bg.debian.org/debian/ wheezy/main sendmail-bin i386 8.14.4-2.1 [964 kB] Fetched 1,626 kB in 0s (3,057 kB/s) (Reading database ... 199577 files and directories currently installed.) Removing task-mail-server ... Selecting previously unselected package sendmail-base. (Reading database ... 199577 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking sendmail-base (from .../sendmail-base_8.14.4-2.1_all.deb) ... Selecting previously unselected package sendmail-cf. Unpacking sendmail-cf (from .../sendmail-cf_8.14.4-2.1_all.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... (Reading database ... 199939 files and directories currently installed.) 1 / 9 Walking in Light with Christ - Faith, Computing, Diary Articles & tips and tricks on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, mobile phone articles, religious related texts http://www.pc-freak.net/blog Removing sa-exim ... [....] Reloading exim4 configuration files:invoke-rc.d: initscript exim4, action "reload" failed. dpkg: exim4-config: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested: exim4-base depends on exim4-config (>= 4.30) | exim4-config-2; however: Package exim4-config is to be removed. Package exim4-config-2 is not installed. Package exim4-config which provides exim4-config-2 is to be removed. exim4-base depends on exim4-config (>= 4.30) | exim4-config-2; however: Package exim4-config is to be removed. Package exim4-config-2 is not installed. Package exim4-config which provides exim4-config-2 is to be removed. Removing exim4-config ... dpkg: exim4-daemon-light: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested: exim4 depends on exim4-daemon-light | exim4-daemon-heavy | exim4-daemon-custom; however: Package exim4-daemon-light is to be removed. Package exim4-daemon-heavy is not installed. Package exim4-daemon-custom is not installed. bsd-mailx depends on default-mta | mail-transport-agent; however: Package default-mta is not installed. Package exim4-daemon-light which provides default-mta is to be removed. Package mail-transport-agent is not installed. Package exim4-daemon-light which provides mail-transport-agent is to be removed. bsd-mailx depends on default-mta | mail-transport-agent; however: Package default-mta is not installed. Package exim4-daemon-light which provides default-mta is to be removed. Package mail-transport-agent is not installed. Package exim4-daemon-light which provides mail-transport-agent is to be removed. Removing exim4-daemon-light ... [ ok ] Stopping MTA:. ALERT: exim paniclog /var/log/exim4/paniclog has non-zero size, mail system possibly broken dpkg: exim4-base: dependency problems, but removing anyway as you requested: exim4 depends on exim4-base (>= 4.80). Removing exim4-base ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Selecting previously unselected package sendmail-bin. (Reading database ... 199786 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking sendmail-bin (from .../sendmail-bin_8.14.4-2.1_i386.deb) ... Processing triggers for man-db ... Setting up sendmail-base (8.14.4-2.1) ... adduser: Warning: The home directory `/var/lib/sendmail' does not belong to the user you are currently creating. Setting up sendmail-cf (8.14.4-2.1) ... 2 / 9 Walking in Light with Christ - Faith, Computing, Diary Articles & tips and tricks on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, mobile phone articles, religious related texts http://www.pc-freak.net/blog Setting up sendmail-bin (8.14.4-2.1) ... update-rc.d: warning: default stop runlevel arguments (0 1 6) do not match sendmail Default-Stop values (1) update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/sm.bin/sendmail to provide /usr/sbin/sendmail-mta (sendmail- mta) in auto mode update-alternatives: using /usr/lib/sm.bin/sendmail to provide /usr/sbin/sendmail-msp (sendmail- msp) in auto mode update-alternatives: warning: not replacing /usr/share/man/man8/sendmail.8.gz with a link You are doing a new install, or have erased /etc/mail/sendmail.mc. If you've accidentaly erased /etc/mail/sendmail.mc, check /var/backups. I am creating a safe, default sendmail.mc for you and you can run sendmailconfig later if you need to change the defaults. [ ok ] Stopping Mail Transport Agent (MTA): sendmail. Updating sendmail environment ... Validating configuration. Writing configuration to /etc/mail/sendmail.conf. Writing /etc/cron.d/sendmail. Could not open /etc/mail/databases(No such file or directory), creating it. Could not open /etc/mail/sendmail.mc(No such file or directory) Reading configuration from /etc/mail/sendmail.conf. Validating configuration. Writing configuration to /etc/mail/sendmail.conf. Writing /etc/cron.d/sendmail. Turning off Host Status collection Could not open /etc/mail/databases(No such file or directory), creating it. Reading configuration from /etc/mail/sendmail.conf. Validating configuration. Creating /etc/mail/databases... Checking filesystem, this may take some time - it will not hang! ... Done. Checking for installed MDAs... Adding link for newly extant program (mail.local) Adding link for newly extant program (procmail) sasl2-bin not installed, not configuring sendmail support. To enable sendmail SASL2 support at a later date, invoke "/usr/share/sendmail/update_auth" Creating/Updating SSL(for TLS) information Creating /etc/mail/tls/starttls.m4... Creating SSL certificates for sendmail. 3 / 9 Walking in Light with Christ - Faith, Computing, Diary Articles & tips and tricks on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, mobile phone articles, religious related texts http://www.pc-freak.net/blog Generating DSA parameters, 2048 bit long prime This could take some time ...+....................+.+..+..+++ ..+.+.............+.++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++* Generating RSA private key, 2048 bit long modulus ....................+++ .....................+++ e is 65537 (0x10001) *** *** *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** WARNING *** *** *** Everything you need to support STARTTLS (encrypted mail transmission and user authentication via certificates) is installed and configured but is *NOT* being used. To enable sendmail to use STARTTLS, you need to: 1) Add this line to /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and optionally to /etc/mail/submit.mc: include(`/etc/mail/tls/starttls.m4')dnl 2) Run sendmailconfig 3) Restart sendmail Updating /etc/hosts.allow, adding "sendmail: all". Please edit /etc/hosts.allow and check the rules location to make sure your security measures have not been overridden - it is common to move the sendmail:all line to the *end* of the file, so your more selective rules take precedence. Checking {sendmail,submit}.mc and related databases... Reading configuration from /etc/mail/sendmail.conf. Validating configuration. Creating /etc/mail/databases... Reading configuration from /etc/mail/sendmail.conf. Validating configuration. Creating /etc/mail/databases... Reading configuration from /etc/mail/sendmail.conf. Validating configuration. Creating /etc/mail/Makefile... Reading configuration from /etc/mail/sendmail.conf. Validating configuration. Writing configuration to /etc/mail/sendmail.conf. Writing /etc/cron.d/sendmail. Disabling HOST statistics file(/var/lib/sendmail/host_status). Creating /etc/mail/sendmail.cf... *** ERROR: FEATURE() should be before MAILER() 4 / 9 Walking in Light with Christ - Faith, Computing, Diary Articles & tips and tricks on GNU/Linux, FreeBSD, Windows, mobile phone articles, religious related texts http://www.pc-freak.net/blog *** MAILER(`local') must appear after FEATURE(`always_add_domain')*** ERROR: FEATURE() should be before MAILER() *** MAILER(`local') must appear after FEATURE(`allmasquerade')*** ERROR: FEATURE() should be before MAILER() Creating /etc/mail/submit.cf... Informational: confCR_FILE file empty: /etc/mail/relay-domains Warning: confCT_FILE