sendmail 8.13 Companion

Chapter 15. The sendmail Command Line

The initial behavior of sendmail is determined largely by the command line used to invoke it. The command line can, for example, cause sendmail to use a different configuration file or to rebuild the aliases file rather than deliver mail. The command line can be typed at your keyboard, executed from a boot-time script, or even executed by an MUA when sending mail.

What’s New with V8.13

V8.13 sendmail introduced five new command-line switches and modified the way one existing command-line switch worked. Of these, the first is covered in this chapter and the last four are covered in Chapter 11 and Chapter 16.

• The modified -v verbose switch with the MSP (see Section 15.1.1 ^[V8.13])

• The new -D debug file switch (see Section 16.1.1 ^[V8.13])

• The new -Q quarantining switch (see Section 11.1.2.2 ^[V8.13])

• The new -qQ switch to handle quarantined messages (see Section 11.1.2.2 ^[V8.13])

• The new -qL switch to handle lost files (see Section 11.1.6 ^[V8.13])

The Modified -v Verbose Switch with the MSP

Since V8.12, sendmail has run as non-set-user-id root (10.1^[3ed]). One problem with this scheme is that only the connection between the MSP sendmail and the local listening daemon is viewable when using the -v command-line switch. This restriction made it difficult to diagnose certain sending problems in the traditional manner.

Beginning with V8.13, the -v command-line switch causes the MSP sendmail to send the SMTP VERB (verbose) command to the local listening ...