Sendmail, 3rd Edition

How checkcompat( ) Works

When sendmail prepares to deliver mail, it first checks the size of the mail message and rejects (bounces) it if it is larger than the limit imposed by the M= delivery agent equate (see M=). V8.8 and above sendmail then call the check_compat rule set (see Section 7.1.4). After that, all versions of sendmail call the checkcompat( ) routine.

The checkcompat( ) routine lies in a unique position within the sendmail code. It is the one place where both the sender and already aliased recipient addresses are available at the same time. Because it is invoked immediately before actual delivery, all the information needed for delivery is available to you for checking.

If checkcompat( ) returns EX_OK, as defined in <sysexits.h>, the mail message is considered OK and delivered. Otherwise the message is bounced. If you wish the message to be requeued instead of bounced, you can return EX_TEMPFAIL.

Again note that the checkcompat( ) routine is called once for each already aliased recipient.

Arguments Passed to checkcompat( )

The checkcompat( ) is found in the C-language source file sendmail/conf.c. Inside that file you will find it declared like this:

checkcompat(to, e)
        register ADDRESS *to;
        register ENVELOPE *e;

Here, to is a pointer to a structure of typedef ADDRESS which contains information about the recipient. And e is a pointer to a structure of typedef ENVELOPE which contains information about the current envelope. (Actually, both are linked lists of structures.) ...