Sendmail hijacking Mailscanner

Matt Kettler mkettler at evi-inc.com
Mon Jan 15 14:49:43 CET 2007


Gordon Colyn wrote:
> ITNT Banner CampaignHi all,
> 
> I have a problem where somehow sendmail gets started on my Linux server 
> running MailScanner and therefore spam mail gets through as it by-passes the 
> mailscanner process.  I have crawled through all the logs and have no idea 
> what starts the sendmail process and it is also completely random...very 
> frustrating.  Does anyone know of a script or a way that I can test to see 
> if sendmail is running then stop the process automatically?
> 
> I am running Mandriva 2006, with sendmail 8.13.4.

Well, actually, you NEED sendmail running with MailScanner.. Assuming you're
using it as your MTA for MailScanner. In fact, you need two Sendmails running.
However, the ones that should be running should be a queue-only and queue-runner.

Realistically, you could write a script to find and kill sendmail, but you'd
also have to make it not kill the ones that MS needs, which might be a bit tricky.

That said, have you made sure the normal "sendmail" startup script is disabled
in your runlevel? Mandriva might have a tool that runs around and checks the
status of all your daemons and restarts them.

ls /etc/rc3.d/ |grep sendmail
ls /etc/rc5.d/ |grep sendmail

Both should return files starting with K instead of S.




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