At 07:14 AM 12/17/99 jay goldberg wrote:
can anybody tell me1. if the file called maillog is the only log file that is used by smtp? (in var\log)
Seems to be... on the RaQ using RedHat 5.2, anyway. On my slackware boxes the file is /var/log/messages.
2. How to change the default number of retries that a message will be attempted before it is undeliverable?
I just found a few entries in sendmail.cf that appear to have some such functionality, though I've never tried to understand how it works. You might try looking it up in "Sendmail" the O'Reilly book (which I've mentioned before; it's my sendmail-bible).
3. How to change how often a message is retried by the server?
Same answer as above.
4. Can someone explain what the following error means (in the maillog file)?Dec 14 08:12:07 mail in.qpopper[32208]: (v2.53) Unable to get canonical name of client, err = 2
Not sure in this context; usually a canonical name is a name found in a DNS record. i.e.: in DNS, an A record for <mail.yourname.com> might show 123.123.123.123 while a CNAME record for <mail.yourname.com> might show www.yourname.com. Using CNAME records for hosts pointed to for MX records is "a bad thing" on the Internet; some MTAs don't like them. However, that said, I don't understand why a local delivery agent like qpopper would even need a canonical name.
5. If there is any reason not to change the rights on the maillog file so that admin can ftp that file to a local pc. I am going to be creating an app to parse the log file so that we can monitor (if necessary ) email usage by our users.
Perfectly reasonable to allow r-- for group and world rights (chmod 644 maillog); that's the way my slackware linux boxes (some going back to 1994) are set up. It's a small security problem of course; someone _could_ read your mail log and figure out _something_ about your system.
If you're paranoid a safer route would be to go chmod 640, and make admin a member of the group "root".
Jeff