xref: /csrg-svn/usr.sbin/sendmail/READ_ME (revision 59106)

/*-
 *	@(#)READ_ME	6.7 (Berkeley) 04/16/93
 */

THIS IS AN ALPHA VERSION OF SENDMAIL.  DON'T EVEN THINK ABOUT USING IT
IN A HEAVY PRODUCTION ENVIRONMENT.  We've been running it (in various
forms) at Berkeley for several months, but our environment is far from
general.  In particular, it hasn't been heavily tested for non-SMTP
environments.  The good news is that most of the changes have been
Internet-related, and that has been tested.

REPORT ANY BUGS to sendmail@CS.Berkeley.EDU.

THIS IS COPYRIGHTED CODE.  BY COMPILING AND RUNNING THIS CODE YOU AGREE
to upgrade to the production release when it comes out.  You understand
that we hope this will be by June, but if there are serious problems
it may be longer than that.

PLEASE DO NOT MAKE THIS AVAILABLE ON PUBLIC FTP.  Since it is still an
early release, I'd prefer that people get copies directly from Berkeley
to make certain that they have the most recent version.  This isn't
an attempt to limit access, just to make certain that everyone is able
to keep up.

You don't have to install mail.local to run the new version of sendmail.
Many versions of /bin/mail take a "-d" flag or do local delivery already.
In particular, mail.local is largely specific to 4.4 BSD, and will not
be easy to compile elsewhere.  It was written by Keith Bostic, not myself,
and was not intended for the "general case".

There are several related RFCs that you may wish to read -- they are
available via anonymous FTP to several sites, including nic.ddn.mil
(directory rfc), ftp.nisc.sri.com (rfc), nis.nsf.net (RFC),
nisc.jvnc.net (rfc), venera.isi.edu (in-notes), and wuarchive.wustl.edu
(info/rfc).  They can also be retrieved via electronic mail by sending
email to one of:

	mail-server@nisc.sri.com
		Put "send rfcNNN" in message body
	nis-info@nis.nsf.net
		Put "send RFCnnn.TXT-1" in message body
	sendrfc@jvnc.net
		Put "RFCnnn" as Subject: line

Important RFCs for electronic mail are:

	RFC821	SMTP protocol
	RFC822	Mail header format
	RFC974	MX routing
	RFC976	UUCP mail format
	RFC1123	Host requirements (modifies 821, 822, and 974)
	RFC1413	Identification server

Other standards that may be of interest (but which are less directly
relevant to sendmail) are:

	RFC987	Mapping between RFC822 and X.400
	RFC1049	Content-Type header field (extension to RFC822)

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons the Makefiles are for the new
Berkeley "make" and will not work on the old, traditional make.  I urge
you to get this make from Net2 (available on many public FTP archives).
Failing that, some directories have a "Makefile.dist" that will work on
older versions of make (but don't have the niceties included).

Similar comments apply to the man pages -- they use the new Berkeley
-mandoc macros instead of the -man macros.  You can get these from
Net2 as well.

IF YOU WANT TO RUN THE NEW BERKELEY DB SOFTWARE:  ****  DO NOT  ****
use the version that was on the Net2 tape -- it has a number of
nefarious bugs that were bad enough when I got them; you shouldn't have
to go through the same thing.  Instead, get a new version via public
FTP from vangogh.CS.Berkeley.EDU, file pub/db.tar.Z.  This software
is highly recommended; it gets rid of several stupid limits, it's much
faster, and the interface is nicer to animals and plants.  You will
also probably find that you have to add -I/where/you/put/db/include
to the sendmail makefile to get db.h to work properly.

The structure of this directory tree is:

cf		Source for Berkeley configuration files.  These are
		different than what you've seen before.  They are a
		fairly dramatic rewrite, requiring the new sendmail
		(since they use new features).
contrib		Some contributed tools to help with sendmail.  THESE
		ARE NOT SUPPORTED by Berkeley -- contact the original
		authors if you have problems.
doc		Documentation.  If you are getting source, read
		op.me -- it's long, but worth it.
mail.local	Source for mail.local(8), a local delivery program.
		Older versions of sendmail called /bin/mail with a
		special -d flag to mean "really deliver this mail";
		this is a completely new (and much smaller) program
		that does absolutely nothing but deliver local mail.
		THIS IS SPECIFIC TO 4.4BSD, and is not under my
		control.
mailstats	Statistics printing program.  It has the pathname of
		sendmail.st compiled in, so if you've changed that,
		beware.  This isn't all that useful.
makemap		A program that creates the keyed maps used by the $( ... $)
		construct in sendmail.  It is primitive but effective.
		It takes a very simple input format, so you will probably
		expect to preprocess must human-convenient formats
		using sed scripts before this program will like them.
		But it should be functionally complete.
praliases	A program to print the DBM version of the aliases file.
		It hasn't been converted to understand the new Berkeley
		DB format (which we are using).
rmail		Source for rmail(8).  This is used as a delivery
		agent for for UUCP, and could presumably be used by
		other non-socket oriented mailers.  Older versions of
		rmail are probably deficient.
src		Source for the sendmail program itself.