Questions regarding Sendmail on FreeBSD

[Jason Williams]

Hello everyone.

I've been playing with Sendmail for a couple of weeks now and I feel pretty 
comfortable with it. Lately, what i've done is just download the source 
code for sendmail and build and compile as needed. It still works fine.

However, I have some questions about how Sendmail comes setup default on a 
FreeBSD system. For instance, there are quite a few directories and 
locations of where sendmail items are located and im confused as to why 
everything is where it is and why there are duplicate files.

For instance:

mail# find / -type d -name sendmail -print
/usr/libexec/sendmail
/usr/share/sendmail
/usr/src/contrib/sendmail
/usr/src/contrib/sendmail/include/sendmail
/usr/src/etc/sendmail
/usr/src/share/sendmail
/usr/src/usr.sbin/sendmail

Doing a quick scan of some of the directories:

mail# ls -la /usr/share/sendmail/cf/
total 202
drwxr-xr-x  11 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 04:58 .
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 04:58 ..
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel  174953 Oct 27 07:25 README
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    1024 Mar  5 04:58 cf
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 04:58 domain
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    1536 Mar  5 04:58 feature
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 04:58 hack
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 04:58 m4
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 04:58 mailer
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    1024 Mar  5 04:58 ostype
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel    6273 Oct 27 07:25 sendmail.schema
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 04:58 sh
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 04:58 siteconfig


mail# ls -l /usr/src/contrib/sendmail/
total 604
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel     321 Aug 27  2000 FAQ
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    2290 Mar 29  2003 FREEBSD-upgrade
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    1952 Jun 20  2002 INSTALL
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   10346 Feb 13  2003 KNOWNBUGS
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    4117 Jun 20  2002 LICENSE
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel     966 Mar 25  2002 Makefile
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   57708 Mar  3  2003 PGPKEYS
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   18089 Feb 13  2003 README
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  455225 Mar 29  2003 RELEASE_NOTES
drwxr-xr-x  11 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 cf
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    1024 Mar  5 13:24 contrib
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 doc
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 editmap
drwxr-xr-x   6 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 include
drwxr-xr-x   3 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 libmilter
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    2048 Mar  5 13:24 libsm
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 libsmdb
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 libsmutil
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 mail.local
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 mailstats
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 makemap
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 praliases
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 rmail
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 smrsh
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    1536 Mar  5 13:24 src
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 test
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel     512 Mar  5 13:24 vacation

mail# ls -la /usr/src/etc/sendmail/
total 18
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel   512 Mar  5 13:24 .
drwxr-xr-x  14 root  wheel  2048 Mar  5 13:24 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  3364 Sep  4  2003 Makefile
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  4144 Apr 24  2003 freebsd.mc
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  2236 Mar 29  2002 freefall.mc

As you can see, there are a couple of 'cf' directories.
Let's not forget about /etc/mail either.

I'm a bit confused on why everything is spread out the way it is and was 
looking for some feedback to help me understand this more.
For instance, if I was to install a patch (lets say the patch if you dont 
have 8.12.10) I would need to navigate to the source directory for the 
default sendmail on FreeBSD...where is that directory?

I appreciate the help. Right now, im just trying to understand this as im 
trying to decide whether to use the source tarball for install, or the 
ports tree (love ports!).

Thanks,

Jason