I recently tried to upgrade my Slackware server's sendmail software from 8.14.3 to 8.14.4 and ran into a problem. In a nutshell all outbound non local mail is routed through a smart host requiring authentication. As a result I use a modified version of the "sendmail-slackware-tls-sasl-clamav.mc" to build the “sendmail.cf”. However, when I tried to run sendmail 8.14.4 with my newly created sendmail.cf I was greeted with the following.


Warning: Option: AuthMechanisms requires SASL support (-DSASL)
Warning: Option: AuthOptions requires SASL support (-DSASL)
Warning: Option: CACertPath requires TLS support
Warning: Option: CACertFile requires TLS support
Warning: Option: ServerCertFile requires TLS support
Warning: Option: ServerKeyFile requires TLS support
Warning: Option: ClientCertFile requires TLS support
Warning: Option: ClientKeyFile requires TLS support


After some head scratching, I finally ran “sendmail -d0.1 -bv root” which resulted in the following

sendmail -d0.1 -bv root
Version 8.14.4
Compiled with: DNSMAP LOG MATCHGECOS MILTER MIME7TO8 MIME8TO7
NAMED_BIND NETINET NETUNIX NEWDB PIPELINING SCANF USERDB XDEBUG


There is no mention that SASLv2 or STARTTLS is available.

I then found a backup copy of 8.14.3 and checked that in the same way.

sendmail -d0.1 -bv root
Version 8.14.3
Compiled with: DNSMAP LOG MAP_REGEX MATCHGECOS MILTER MIME7TO8 MIME8TO7
NAMED_BIND NETINET NETUNIX NEWDB NIS PIPELINING SASLv2 SCANF
SOCKETMAP STARTTLS TCPWRAPPERS USERDB XDEBUG


Both SASLv2 and STARTTLS are there.

It appears a lot of options are no longer available in the precompiled sendmail for 13.1. Is there a reason for this?


I also came across of what I think is another problem. In addition to the SASL and STARTLSS warnings, I received an error message with 8.14.4 when starting sendmail as follows.

554 5.0.0 /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 167: readcf: unknown option name CipherList

I traced it to the following line in the all the TLS .mc files.

dnl# Do not allow the weak SSLv2:
O CipherList=ALL:!ADH:!NULL:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:-LOW:+SSLv3:+TLSv1:-SSLv2:+EXP:+eNULL

Apparently SSLv2 is now considered weak and the directive is a good idea, but at present this directive is not supported by the sendmail in this package. Will it be supported at some point?

I am running Slackware 13.1 here (64-bit) using this package: sendmail-8.14.4-x86_64-1

My sendmail reports the following :
Eric

I was using the 32-bit package but I guess it would have helped if I referenced the actual package. It was sendmail-8.14.4-i486-1.txz
Perhaps it is as simple as my downloading the wrong package and the right one will cure the problem. I can always hope.

I started a 32-bit Slackware 13.1 virtual machine to test what sendmail reports in a clean install:
So it must be the package you have installed which is at fault. Obviously it is not coming from an official Slackware 13.1 tree, or some dependencies are not being met.
Are you perhaps running Slackware 13.0 with a Slackware 13.1 package for sendmail installed on top of it?

Eric

I guess we can chalk this one up to my not having a glass stomach. Normally I do a complete rebuild one a year but I am probably about 14 months into the last fresh install and was having a problem with the way sendmail was interacting with Outlook and large emails. Since I didn’t feel I wanted to tackle a full rebuild just yet I decided to see if an upgrade in sendmail would help the problem. When I went to the Slackware tree I found sendmail-8.14.4-i486-1.txz easily enough but did not recognize the .txz extension so decided I would see what was available at sendmail.org. I did find a .tgz file there so I installed that but since that did not work quite the way I expected I decided to learn more about .txz files. I found the syntax “tar Jxvf” and used that on the Slackware version and it worked fine. It was at this point that I needed the glass stomach. I didn’t notice that it had saved the sendmail to /usr/sbin as sendmail.new so I was still struggling with the sendmail from the previous install. When you suggested I might be using the wrong package I looked into it further and found the problem. Once I renamed sendmail.new to sendmail everything worked as it should. Thanks for taking the time to straighten me out.

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