[cobalt-users] Majordomo problem... resolved?

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I believe I finally figured out the problem:

On our RaQ2 sendmail.cf runs the sendmail trusted shell, smrsh (see 
"sendmail", the book, published by O'Reilly, page 349ff.

The trusted shell strips the pathname, and looks for the program in a 
special directory, /usr/adm/sm.bin.  In that directory was a symbolic link 
to the copy of "wrapper" in the /usr/local/majordomo directory, so that's 
the one it would always run.

I solved the problem (I hope <wry grin>) by creating a new program name, 
"majordwrapper" and putting it into that sm.bin directory as a symbolic 
link to the copy of "wrapper" in the /usr/local/majord directory.  To 
maintain referrential integrity I also put a symbolic link to the copy of 
"wrapper" in the /usr/local/majord directory, also called "majordwrapper", 
in the /usr/local/majord directory.

Works so far.

Previously, I had a support guy from California Regional Internet (our RaQ 
supplier) on this for many hours; he's their top man and knows Linux 
backwards and forwards (I only know it since kernel 0.99; he's a bit more 
experienced <smile>).

My clue came from this issue:

It seemed that no matter where the copy of "wrapper" resided that we tried 
to send email to, it would always go to the copy in the 
"/usr/local/majordomo" directory.

Then, when I tried sending mail to a copy of the "canned_reply" program in 
the O'Reilly "Managing Internet Information Services" book (which I've used 
in other systems previously without a problem), I got an email returned by 
MAILER-DAEMON that said in part:

  sh: canned_reply not available for sendmail programs

This told me two things... that the shell was the problem, and that it must 
be a special shell that knew specific things about sendmail.

Then my trip through "Sendmail", the O'Reilly book.  Which I've always 
heartily recommended.  Now I know why <smile>.

Only one issue left:  since I installed majordomo (and compiled "wrapper" 
to run majordomo under the user "majordom", how come it doesn't?  It runs 
it as "mail".

Oh well... that's something I can overcome for now.

For the benefit of those of us who overcome the problem by making 
directories and files world writable, may I suggest a (slightly) more 
secure option:  just add the "mail" user to the "daemon" group, and set all 
the files and directories in your majordomo path to be owned by the daemon 
group.  Slightly more secure.  Until we can solve this little issue <smile>.

(This fix took about 20 hours or so to finally figure out... I should write 
a book <smile>.)

Jeff