Skip to Main Content
sendmail 8.13 Companion
book

sendmail 8.13 Companion

by Bryan Costales, George Jansen, Claus Assmann, Gregory Neil Shapiro
September 2004
Intermediate to advanced content levelIntermediate to advanced
192 pages
10h 12m
English
O'Reilly Media, Inc.
Content preview from sendmail 8.13 Companion

Chapter 1. Release Notes

Each release of sendmail is packaged with a file called RELEASE_NOTES, located in the top level of the source distribution. The RELEASE_NOTES file itemizes new features that have been added to each particular version of sendmail since Version 8.1 (released in 1993). This file is very complete but, on the downside, can be difficult to parse.

In this chapter, we first show you the parts of a RELEASE_NOTES file, then we provide the code for a short program that makes reading the RELEASE_NOTES file easier.

Parts of RELEASE_NOTES

Basically, the RELEASE_NOTES file is divided into sections, each of which deals with a separate release of sendmail. These sections are left-justified in the file. Each begins with a single line that contains the version number of the sendmail release, followed by a slash, followed by the version number of the configuration file release, followed by the date of the release. For example:

8.13.0/8.13.0   2004/06/20

Here, the first release of the V8.13 series (8.13.0) is indicated. The release of sendmail and its configuration file are the same. The date of the release is in the form year (first), month, and day.

Each such release section is then followed by indented sections that document a change in the sendmail binary. Some indented sections are prefixed with a keyword and colon. For the most part, those keyword sections describe a change in something other than the binary[1] and can look like this, for example:

SECURITY: Some security matter ...
Become an O’Reilly member and get unlimited access to this title plus top books and audiobooks from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers, thousands of courses curated by job role, 150+ live events each month,
and much more.
Start your free trial

You might also like

Slamming Spam: A Guide for System Administrators

Slamming Spam: A Guide for System Administrators

Dale Nielsen, Robert Haskins
Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Mac OS X Tiger in a Nutshell

Andy Lester, Chris Stone, Chuck Toporek, Jason McIntosh

Publisher Resources

ISBN: 0596008457Catalog PageErrata