Configuring Sendmail?

Ok, I have to admit...

I'm new to RedHat and Linux, only because I used AIX UNIX to do all of my programming in college and haven't had the means untill now to work with it!

Anyway,

I've set up a RedHat server specifically for running phpBB. I used xampp for my web and database services. I've gotten everything phpBB related going exept for the automated and admin emails. I asked on the phpBB forum about using Sendmail or Postfix, 2 progs I've heard of, but they said to look for advise on one of the RedHat forums. Is there anyone familiar with this configuration and used and configured sendmail or postfix? I'm in uncharted territory here, can somone help me out?

-lunaray

you could give this a try if you choose to go with sendmail.
but this forum post suggests using postfix over sendmail.
if you wanted to setup squirrelmail with postfix (also suggested in the previous forum post), check this out
it's for fedora, but the steps / files / locations should be pretty similar if not exactly the same for whatever version of redhat you're talking about.


what version of redhat are you talking about? and do you mean redhat enterprise or fedora? or redhat 9 (which is extremely outdated)?

I would also go for postfix before sendmail as mailserver. Postfix is a lot more user-friendly.

Just let us know if you get stuck on anything and i'm sure we'll be able to help you

OK,

I have Postfix DLed, I will be attempting to install on Friday or Saturday! Just wanted to add a few more details about what I'm doing incase there are anymore suggestions...

I am only needing to email out from phpbb, i won't have any incoming emails, and the only emails being sent will be from the phpbb app.

-lunaray

you could have added a few more details answering the question i asked

My bad,

I'm using enterprise, forgot the ver, I'll check on Friday when I get back to my server...

ahh, ok. cool

Linux 2.6.9-34.ELsmp #1 SMP Fri Feb 24 16:54:53 EST 2006 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

Running on an IBM eSeries 336

I tried to build postfix using the make command and received the following errors:

Using non-admin account

$ make
make -f Makefile.in MAKELEVEL= Makefiles
(echo "# Do not edit -- this file documents how Postfix was built for your machine."; /bin/sh makedefs) >makedefs.tmp
/bin/sh: makedefs.tmp: No such file or directory
make: *** [Makefiles] Error 1
make: *** [Makefiles] Error 2

Here's my dir_struc just incase

$ ls -ltri
total 1068
3768547 -r--r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 11942 Jul 15 1999 LICENSE
3768667 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 479 Jan 14 2002 Makefile.init
3768542 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 1922 Feb 23 2002 COPYRIGHT
3768908 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 50071 Dec 22 2002 RELEASE_NOTES-1.1
3769971 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 5633 Mar 24 2003 US_PATENT_6321267
3768910 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 2315 Jun 19 2003 TLS_ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
3768911 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 38863 Sep 28 2003 RELEASE_NOTES-2.0
3768668 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 1193 Mar 13 2004 PORTING
3768567 drwxr-xr-x 5 1001 wheel 4096 Apr 10 2004 examples
3769968 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 106588 Nov 3 2004 TLS_CHANGES
3769969 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 1629 Dec 11 2004 TLS_LICENSE
3768541 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 17819 Jan 18 2005 IPv6-ChangeLog
3768912 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 26781 Feb 22 2005 RELEASE_NOTES-2.1
3768522 drwxr-xr-x 5 1001 wheel 4096 Mar 8 2005 auxiliary
3768913 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 19753 Mar 9 2005 RELEASE_NOTES-2.2
3769973 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 23795 Aug 13 2005 postfix-install
3769974 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 617 Nov 7 2005 pflogsumm-conn-delays-dsn-patch
3768914 drwxr-xr-x 45 1001 wheel 4096 Apr 18 2006 src
3769970 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 1065 Jun 14 2006 TLS_TODO
3768786 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Jul 6 2006 implementation-notes
3768519 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 2961 Jul 7 2006 COMPATIBILITY
3768793 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Jul 8 2006 mantools
3768669 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Jul 19 2006 html
3768566 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 2701 Jul 21 2006 Makefile.in
3769972 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 11523 Aug 26 10:54 makedefs
3768540 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 5708 Nov 10 06:11 AAAREADME
3768791 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Dec 5 18:40 libexec
3768564 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Dec 5 18:40 lib
3768789 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Dec 5 18:40 include
3768545 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Dec 5 18:40 bin
3768591 drwxr-xr-x 8 1001 wheel 4096 Dec 24 14:10 man
3768830 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Dec 24 16:05 proto
3768469 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Dec 24 16:08 README_FILES
3768544 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 479 Dec 24 16:08 Makefile
3768548 drwxr-xr-x 2 1001 wheel 4096 Dec 24 16:08 conf
3768909 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 35660 Dec 24 18:14 RELEASE_NOTES
3768543 -rw-r--r-- 1 1001 wheel 448944 Jan 1 14:56 HISTORY
3768468 lrwxrwxrwx 1 1001 wheel 20 Jan 27 10:34 INSTALL -> README_FILES/INSTALL


Would it just be easier to configure Sendmail?

I'm new to both...

-lunaray

Sendmail is notorious for being a total rat's nest. You're almost certainly better off using postfix.

Kinda hard to tell what the problem is from what you posted.

Did you do ./configure before you tried "make?"

I did not, I didn't see that in the install instructions.... Was I supposed to?

Well, it may or may not work depending on what distribution of sendmail you have.

Configure is part of the GNU automake setup. Most things ship with a default makefile that works on most configurations. But if you do configure first, by typing "./configure" to run the configure script that's in the main directory that you untarred the package into, it will go and look at what your hardware is and it'll generate a makefile based on that, that will be more likely to work.

with every distro i've used except for gentoo, i've had to to ./configure when compiling a program from source.. and that's more than a few distros

Configure really hasn't been around that long. It's almost more of a Linux thing. On Data General UNIX, real old SunOS, etc, you had to edit makefiles manually to tell it what libraries you were running, what versions you had, even what kind of hardware it was running on. Back then, makefiles were not all that smart. If you want to see an example of what I mean, go look at, say, the Rogue or Moria sources, something that hasn't had an update since the mid-1990s, and you'll see what I'm talking about. Lines like "#Uncomment the next line if you're running DGUX without curses" and similar things were commonplace. You used to have to go through the entire makefile and change big chunks of it.

And then half the time it still wouldn't work.

Automake, configure et cetera changed all that. When I hear people bitching about having to build things from sources, or how terrible RPM is, I just laugh.

yea.. i haven't been around that long either. lol i started using linux in 2004, born in 1985. and the majority of variations i've used have been linux. i've used pc-bsd, tried fbsd w/o success, considered installing solaris but i passed out before the installer was even able to get started really.. lol
and i've used OSX a bit, which isn't really unix but it has a unix base. lol

I've enjoyed the history and explaination of configure, but...

I tried doing a ./configure before tryin to run the make, it didn't work. Am I supposed to put this app in the same directory as sendmail? /usr/sbin

I could use a lil more coaching,

-lunaray