MS4.x config/runtime issues

[Julian Field]

At 14:48 21/11/2002, you wrote:
>On Thu, 7 Nov 2002, Julian Field wrote:
>
> > At 17:18 07/11/2002, you wrote:
> > [...]
> > >3. With v3, I had had the default (and sensible!):
> > >       Outgoing Queue Dir = /var/spool/mqueue
> > >
> > >    To ensure co-residency on the same physical partition of the other
> > >    directories, they had been subdirectories of this:
> > >       Incoming Queue Dir = /var/spool/mqueue/mq.in
> > >       Incoming Work Dir = /var/spool/mqueue/incoming
> > >       Quarantine Dir = /var/spool/mqueue/quarantine
> > >    Solid and safe.
> >
> > Interesting setup, hadn't occurred to me that people might do that.
> >
> > >    Further, the standard "/var/spool/mqueue" (i.e. "Outgoing Queue Dir")
> > >    was also a separate partition for ease of system maintenance
> (including
> > >    possible OS replacement).  So it also contained a "lost+found".
> > >
> > >    But under v4 this gives errors:
> > >       Queue directory /var/spool/mqueue cannot contain sub-directories,
> > >       currently contains dir lost+found at
> > >       /opt/MailScanner/bin/MailScanner/Sendmail.pm line 839
> > >
> > >    (Presumably each of the other directories could also have given an
> > >    analogous message, had it got that far.)
> > >
> > >    Is there any reason why v4.x forbids such subdirectory use?
> > >    (Note that the apparently simple solution of making the partition
> > >    "/var/spool" instead of "/var/spool/mqueue" makes OS replacement
> > >    potentially more tricky, as "/var/spool" contians "system" things
> other
> > >    than mqueue.
> > >
> > >    Does MailScanner really require this restriction?  Can it be removed?
> >
> > I thought it was a good idea at the time, but setups such as yours hadn't
> > occurred to me. On reflection it may be better to remove the check. I will
> > still look for a q1 or qf directory though, in an attempt to find split
> > queue directories which sendmail will use if it finds them. So you can get
> > it going now, the minimal patch to Sendmail.pm is attached to this message.
> > There is actually just 1 extra line of code.
>
>That was excellent.  Thanks.  We have had it running in production on our
>three Solaris servers (each of 60K-120K msgs/day) for nearly two weeks.
>
>Which leads me to... a patch to make this more flexible per-site.
>
>We are about to migrate this service from Solaris to Linux.  (Upside: the
>hardware is cheaper;  downside: I've got to learn Redhat.)  It is going
>reasonably well.  I find that everything is in a different location, but
>I'm trying to stay with the Redhat/RPM defaults as far as possible.
>
>But I would very much like to keep the above scheme: that is, all the MS
>directories (incoming, outgoing, work, quarantine) in a single partition
>and as subdirectories of "/var/spool/mqueue".
>
>Now these specifications appear not only in the MailScanner.conf file, but
>some also appear in the startup script "/etc/rc.d/init.d/MailScanner".
>And that script itself has possible overrides of its data values from
>"/etc/sysconfig/MailScanner".

/etc/sysconfig/MailScanner is where you should put the changes. That's
where RedHat keeps localisations for init.d scripts. It will use values
defined in there in preference to what is in the init.d script. The
/etc/sysconfig file will not be over-written by an upgrade if you edit it.

The only things I should have done differently are
1) allow the setting of the mqueue.in directory in the /etc/sysconfig file
as well and
2) put the default values outside the "if" statement so it doesn't matter
if they aren't mentioned in the /etc/sysconfig file.

I have corrected these 2 problems for the next version.

No insult intended, but personally I do not like the idea of keeping other
MS dirs inside /var/spool/mqueue, as they aren't part of mqueue's logical
purpose (i.e. a sendmail mail queue and nothing else).

>Incidentally, and changing subject, the "Convert Dangerous HTML To Text"
>in the pre-release 4.06 I've been running on Solaris is going very well.
>The local guinea-pig users are very grateful!  Herewith their thanks,
>Julian!

Glad to hear it is proving useful.
--
Julian Field                Teaching Systems Manager
jkf at ecs.soton.ac.uk         Dept. of Electronics & Computer Science
Tel. 023 8059 2817          University of Southampton
                             Southampton SO17 1BJ