sendmail, 4th Edition

DontBlameSendmail

Relax file security checks V8.9 and later

Although sendmail is very security-conscious, there are times when a site might wish for a more relaxed security posture. We don’t recommend any relaxation of security, and in fact recommend beefing up your security whenever possible. But for sites that prefer to reduce sendmail’s security checks, V8.9 and later offer the DontBlameSendmail option. It is declared like this:

O DontBlameSendmail=for,for,...                       ← configuration file (V8.9
and later)
-ODontBlameSendmail=for,for,...                       ← command line (V8.9 and
later)
define(`confDONT_BLAME_SENDMAIL',``for,for,...'')     ← mc configuration (V8.9 and
later)

Here, for is one of the comma-separated items^[379] listed in the lefthand column of Table 24-18 that are not case-sensitive. If the entire DontBlameSendmail is absent, or if nothing is listed after the equals sign, overall safety is unchanged. If an item is specified that is not listed in the table, sendmail prints the following error and ignores that option:

readcf: DontBlameSendmail option: bad item here unrecognized

The DontBlameSendmail option is not safe. If specified from the command line, it can cause sendmail to relinquish its special privileges.

Table 24-18. DontBlameSendmail change items

Item	§	Meaning
AssumeSafeChown	DontBlameSendmail=AssumeSafeChown on page 1011	Assume chown(2) is safe.
ClassFileInUnsafeDirPath	DontBlameSendmail=ClassFileInUnsafeDirPath on page 1011	Allow F class macro files in unsafe directory paths.