Configuring And Administrating Mail - Lab Exercises

sendmail

Exercise 1: Installing and configuring sendmail

1. Retrieve the sendmail binary distribution and a gunzip binary for your platform from <URL:ftp://ftp.uwsg.indiana.edu/>. gunzip the distribution with ./gunzip sendmail-8.7.5.tar.gz and untar the distribution.
2. Kill the running sendmail daemon, if any.
3. Install the executable and manual files according to directions in the distribution.
4. Install the iu-standalone.cf configuration file according to directions in the distribution.

Exercise 2: Aliasing

1. If needed, modify the aliases file so that the appropriate aliases are pointing to the postmaster alias (MAILER-DAEMON, and any of the pseudo-users in the passwd file). Point the postmaster alias to a human. (Normally, you would point it to the administrator of the machine, but in this case, point it to root and make sure there is not already an alias for root).
2. Set up an alias for keeping track of system changes called admin-log. This alias should append mail to the file /usr/local/adm/admin-log. Create any directories and files needed with the appropriate permissions. Note: Remember that if you choose setuid but not executable for the permissions of /usr/local/adm/admin-log, it cannot be owned by root. In this case, use an existing user, or create one to own the file.
3. Re-build the aliases database after your changes have been made.

Exercise 3: Invoking sendmail

1. Start the newly installed sendmail as a daemon which process the mail queue every thirty minutes.

Exercise 4: Debugging sendmail

1. Verify that mail sent to postmaster will be re-directed to root using sendmail in verify mode.
2. Verify that mail sent to admin-log is appended to the file, /usr/local/adm/admin-log.
3. Using sendmail in test mode, verify that mail sent to root will be delivered locally, by displaying how rulesets 3 and 0 will rewrite the address root.

Cleanup

1. Remove the admin-log alias from the aliases file and rebuild the database.
2. Remove the /usr/local/adm/admin-log file and any of the directories you created to get there.

Setting Up Mailing Lists

Exercise 1: Creating a simple mailing list

1. Create three user accounts on your machine.
2. Using sendmail aliases, create a mailing list with root as the -request and owner- address, containing the addresses of the three accounts you created.
3. Send mail to the list request address, and verify that it is properly delivered.
4. Send mail to the list itself, and verify that the message gets to all of the recipients
5. Remove one of the users from the list and rebuild the database. Send mail to the list again, and verify that the removed user does not receive the message
6. If you created the list by putting the list members in /etc/aliases, move the list to a file instead. Rebuild the database and repeat step 4.
7. Remove the mailing list entirely, and rebuild the database.
8. Remove the user accounts you created.