sendmail, 4th Edition (Paperback)

by Bryan Costales (Author), Claus Assmann (Author), George Jansen (Author), Gregory Shapiro (Author)
Key Phrases: configuration command, user database, mail delivery agent, Alphabetized Options, Alphabetized Database-Map Types, Compile-Time Macro Reference (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
A classic O'Reilly title since 1993, sendmail now covers Versions 8.10 through 8.14 of this email routing program, including dozens of new features, options, and macros. This edition also takes a more nuts-and-bolts approach than its predecessors. It includes both an administration handbook and a reference guide that provide you with clear options for installing, configuring and managing sendmail's latest versions and companion programs.

The sendmail program has withstood the test of time because of its ability to solve the mail-routing needs of all sites large or small, complex or simple. But it's also difficult to configure and even more difficult to understand. That's why this book has proven valuable since the dawn of email. With it, you will be able to configure the program to meet any need, so that you never again have to call in a sendmail guru to bail you out.

sendmail includes the following sections:

• Some Basics is especially useful for people new to the program. It covers the basic concepts underlying mail delivery and the roles sendmail plays in that delivery



• Administration covers all aspects of handling sendmail, from downloading and installing new releases to managing mailing lists and aliases



• Configuration Reference contains a heavily cross-referenced guide for configuring and tuning sendmail. Every arcane detail of sendmail is listed alphabetically



• Appendices contain more detail about sendmail than you may ever need


This edition also includes new material on SSL and AUTH and a new chapter on Mitlers. If you're interested in what has changed since the last edition, one appendix categorizes the many improvements of sendmail's intervening versions by chapter, complete with references to the appropriate sections and page numbers in the book.

With sendmail, system administrators, programmers, network engineers, and even inexperienced users will be able to match this challenging but necessary utility to the needs of their network.

About the Author
Bryan Costales lives and writes in San Francisco, California. He has been active in system administration and software development for more than 20 years and has been writing articles and books about computer software for more than 25 years. His most notable books are "C from A to Z" (Prentice Hall), "Unix Communications" (Howard Sams), and "sendmail" (O'Reilly). In addition to technical books, he also writes fiction and hosts a free multimedia web site.

Claus Assmann is a member of the Sendmail Consortium and works for Sendmail, Inc. He is the maintainer of sendmail 8 and currently implements a new MTA (message transfer agent) named MeTA1. His main interests in computer technology are security and performance. He studied computer science at the University of Kiel in Germany, where he received his Ph.D. in 1992.

George Jansen is a freelance writer who has worked with Bryan Costales on several of Bryan's books. His first novel, The Jesse James Scrapbook, is published by Hilliard & Harris. His second, The Fade-away, is published by Pocol Press. He lives in the Bay Area, drives a brand new Toyota Yaris, and enjoys baseball, classic jazz, and taking long naps.

Gregory Shapiro began his professional career as a systems administrator for Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) after graduating from the university in 1992. During his tenure as Senior Unix Systems Administrator, he became involved with beta testing the BIND name server, the sendmail mail transfer agent, and other Unix utilities such as emacs and screen. His involvement with sendmail grew until he became Principal Engineer at Sendmail, Inc., where he continued to support the open source version while working on Sendmail's commercial products. He later moved into the IT team as the Senior Unix Network Systems Administrator. He is now Director, Strategic Technology at Sendmail, Inc. He is also a FreeBSD committer and has served as program committee member for BSDCon 2002 and program chair for BSDCon 2003. Greg lives in California and enjoys reading science fiction and fantasy books, traveling, and seeing movies and theater productions.

Product Details

• Paperback: 1308 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media, Inc.; 4 edition (October 26, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596510292
• ISBN-13: 978-0596510299
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.9 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #130,778 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A 'must' for programmers who would keep up with the latest., January 6, 2008

By	Midwest Book Review (Oregon, WI USA) - See all my reviews

Bryan Costales, George Jansen, and Claus Afsmann with Gregory Neil Shapiro provide the 4th updated edition of SENDMAIL, a top pick for any advanced programmer's library, especially those featuring books solid on networking. SENDMAIL first appeared in 1993: this version covers 8.10 and 8.14 of the email routing program and is a 'must' for programmers who would keep up with the latest.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Needed upgrade to an old O'Reilly standard, November 10, 2007

By	calvinnme "Texan refugee" (Fredericksburg, Va) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

For years O'Reilly has been the last word in exhaustively explaining Unix utilities, and the first edition of this book goes back to 1993. The reason to upgrade to this fourth edition is that it covers version 8.14 of sendmail, which is now the current release. This new edition looks much like past editions, but it also contains in Appendix B the many improvements of sendmail since the previous edition and in which section of the book you can find each improvement covered.

Even though sendmail is an old program, it is still useful. It is mature, reliable, and scalable. Unfortunately, its ability to be configured for all kinds of uses and users has made it much more complex. Sendmail is capable of transporting mail between a wide variety of machines. Consequently, its configuration file is very flexible, allowing a single binary to be distributed to many machines, where the configuration file can be customized to suit particular needs. This configurability contributes to making sendmail complex. This book does a good job of sorting out just about all of the possibilities and questions you might have. The following is the table of contents, not currently shown on the product description page:

Chapter 1. Some Basics

Part 1: Administration
Chapter 2. Download, Build, and Install
Chapter 3. Tune sendmail with Compile-Time Macros
Chapter 4. Maintain Security with sendmail
Chapter 5. Authentication and Encryption
Chapter 6. The sendmail Command Line
Chapter 7. How to Handle Spam
Chapter 8. Test Rule Sets with -bt
Chapter 9. DNS and sendmail
Chapter 10. Build and Use Companion Programs
Chapter 11. Manage the Queue
Chapter 12. Maintain Aliases
Chapter 13. Mailing Lists and forward
Chapter 14. Signals, Transactions, and Syslog
Chapter 15. Debug sendmail with -d

Part 2: Configuration Reference
Chapter 16. Configuration File Overview
Chapter 17. Configure sendmail with m4
Chapter 18. The R (Rules) Configuration Command
Chapter 19. The S (Rule Sets) Configuration Command
Chapter 20. The M (Mail Delivery Agent) Configuration Command
Chapter 21. The D (Define a Macro) Configuration Command
Chapter 22. The C and F (Class Macro) Configuration Commands
Chapter 23. The K (Database-Map) Configuration Command
Chapter 24. The O (Options) Configuration Command
Chapter 25. The H (Headers) Configuration Command
Chapter 26. The X (Milters) Configuration Command

Part 3: Appendixes
Appendix A. The mc Configuration Macros and Directives
Appendix B. What's New Since Edition 3

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reference For Sendmail Administrators, May 29, 2008

By	Daniel McKinnon (Tewksbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

'sendmail' is one of those classic O'Reilly books that have undertaken legend status. Now in it's 4th revision, there really isn't much new that can be said about this book. With editions having been released in 1993, 1997, 2002, and now 2007, this book is required reading for anyone that is in charge of mail routing responsibilities at their company. With 26 chapters, 1200+ pages and content that is spot on, this is a must buy for anyone that is using sendmail on a daily basis.

***** HIGHLY RECOMMENDED