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Upgrading Sendmail to 8.11.3

  1. Obtain the latest source from sendmail.org (8.11.3 at the time of this page's creation). Put the source in a temporary place, I put it in my home directory under sendmail.
  2. Backup your current configuration: daemon, startup script,and conf files.
       suse:~ #cp /usr/sbin/sendmail /usr/sbin/sendmail.old  (daemon)
       suse:~ #cp /etc/aliases /etc/aliases.old              (aliases file)
       suse:~ #cp /etc/aliases.db /etc/aliases.db.old        (aliases database file)
       suse:~ #cp /etc/sendmail.cf /etc/sendmail.cf.old      (configuration file)   
       suse:~ #cp /etc/sendmail.cw /etc/sendmail.cw.old      (domain aliases)
       suse:~ #cp /etc/rc.d/sendmail /etc/rc.d/sendmail.old  (startup script)
    
  3. Decompress and untar the source file.
       suse:~/sendmail #gzip -cd bind-9.1.1.tar.gz | tar xvf -
    
  4. Change to the newly created sendmail-8.11.3 {source} directory and read the README file
       suse:~/sendmail #cd sendmail-8.11.3
       suse:~/sendmail/sendmail-8.11.3 #less README
    
  5. Configure and compile the source with the Build script.
       suse:~/sendmail/sendmail-8.11.3 #sh Build
    
  6. Change to the cf/cf directory and copy the .mc file that matches your system to config.mc
       suse:~/sendmail/sendmail-8.11.3/cf/cf #cp generic-linux.mc config.mc
    
  7. If you are upgrading, you can create a new sendmail.cf (step 8) or use your existing one (step 9).
  8. Creating a new config.mc file, you can read the sendmail-8.11.3/cf/README file for options and features, these should be added before configuring the .cf file with M4 or sh Build.
    1. Create the config.cf file using the m4 macro processor
         suse:~/sendmail/sendmail-8.11.3/cf/cf #m4 ../m4/m4.cf config.mc > config.cf
      
    2. Run sh Build config.cf, it does the same thing as the above command (checks the config.* file)
         suse:~/sendmail/sendmail-8.11.3/cf/cf #sh Build config.cf
         using M4=/usr/bin/m4
         make: `config.cf' is up to date
      
    3. Install config.cf as /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
         suse:~/sendmail/sendmail-8.11.3/cf/cf #cp config.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
      
  9. Using an existing /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file, lines to change in sendmail.cf:
    1. Update the version of the file
         # level 8 config file format
         V9/Berkeley
      
    2. Update the reported version, can be seen by telnet {host|IP} 25.
         #Configuration version number
         DZ8.11.3/Linux 8.11.3   
      
  10. Use you startup script to stop the sendmail daemon or kill the process using ps -ax, kill -9 [sendmail pid].
       suse:~#/etc/rc.d/sendmail stop
    
  11. Install the binary created in step 5, this will install the binary to /usr/sbin, and installs the man pages as well.
       suse:~/sendmail/sendmail-8.11.3/ #sh Build install  
    
  12. Update the aliases.db file by running newaliases
       suse:~#newaliases
       /etc/aliases: 36 aliases, longest 10 bytes, 403 bytes total
    
  13. Start the sendmail daemon.
       suse:~#/etc/rc.d/sendmail start
    

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