sendmail replacement

[S.N.Grigoriev]

13.01.10, 11:32, "Matthew Seaman" <m.seaman at infracaninophile.co.uk>:

> S.N.Grigoriev wrote:
>  
>  > I would like to know if there is a way to completely
>  > replace the base sendmail with a ports one. The goal
>  > is to have corresponding files on the traditional places
>  > (not in /usr/local) and to use the system sendmail
>  > startup script but not /usr/local/etc/rc.d/sendmail.sh.
>  
>  That's not the usual approach with sendmail, unlike several other software packages.
>  
>  Because of the existence of mailer.conf(5) you can achieve equivalent 
>  functionality without overwriting the base system sendmail. With the
>  following contents:
>  
>  % cat /etc/mail/mailer.conf 
>  # $FreeBSD: src/etc/mail/mailer.conf,v 1.3.36.1 2009/08/03 08:13:06 kensmith Exp $
>  #
>  # Execute the "real" sendmail program, named /usr/libexec/sendmail/sendmail
>  #
>  sendmail        /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>  send-mail       /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>  mailq           /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>  newaliases      /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>  hoststat        /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>  purgestat       /usr/local/sbin/sendmail
>  
>  all sendmail related commands are mapped onto the ports version of sendmail,
>  installed under LOCALBASE=/usr/local as usual.  These commands are in fact 
>  exactly the same wrapper scripts as used with the system sendmail. With this 
>  setup it is not necessary to use the init script provided by the sendmail port: 
>  simply adding
>  
>  sendmail_enable="YES"
>  
>  to /etc/rc.conf will now cause the ports version of sendmail to be started 
>  using /etc/rc.d/sendmail.  In addition, the following entries in /etc/make.conf 
>  will allow rebuild sendmail configurations and db maps using the Makefile in 
>  /etc/mail:
>  
>  WITH_SENDMAIL_PORT=     yes
>  SENDMAIL_CF_DIR=        /usr/local/share/sendmail/cf
>  MAKEMAP=                /usr/local/sbin/makemap
>  
>  Finally, adding 
>  
>  WITHOUT_SENDMAIL=yes 
>  
>  to /etc/src.conf will suppress building sendmail as part of the base system,
>  while still building and installing the mailwrapper commands.
>  
>  	Cheers,
>  
>  	Matthew
>  
>  

Matthew,

I thank you for your response. All you wrote is quite right.
But it is a general rule not to use in the system two sets
of slightly different programs with duplicating names. It is
a direct way to have problems.

For example, all third party scripts should be revised to check
absolute pathes, program search results becomes depending
of the PATH value, and so on.

It is relatively easy to do such revisions on a small home system.
But a production server with significant amount of third party software
will require a lot of time to do that job.

To my mind it will be better to have an options in the port Makefile
allowing to replace the sendmail files in place.

-- 
Regards,
Serguey.