Domino on Fedora

[Tom Van Looy]

Hi

We are installing Domino on Fedora (9).  The (IBM and Redhat) manuals
tell you to disable sendmail and remove it from the runlevels.

Great! But, ... that breaks all the housekeeping stuff right? How do we
need to configure things to make sure the mail command, cron, logwatch,
etc. keep working?

Anyone here running Domino on Fedora?

Kind regards,

Tom Van Looy

[Phil Meyer]

Tom Van Looy wrote:
> Hi
>
> We are installing Domino on Fedora (9).  The (IBM and Redhat) manuals
> tell you to disable sendmail and remove it from the runlevels.
>
> Great! But, ... that breaks all the housekeeping stuff right? How do we
> need to configure things to make sure the mail command, cron, logwatch,
> etc. keep working?
>
> Anyone here running Domino on Fedora?
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Tom Van Looy

As long as 'something' is listening on port 25, those reports should work.

Good Luck!

[James Wilkinson]

Tom Van Looy wrote:
> Hi
>
> We are installing Domino on Fedora (9).  The (IBM and Redhat) manuals
> tell you to disable sendmail and remove it from the runlevels.
>
> Great! But, ... that breaks all the housekeeping stuff right? How do we
> need to configure things to make sure the mail command, cron, logwatch,
> etc. keep working?

Phil Meyer wrote:
> As long as 'something' is listening on port 25, those reports should work.

I believe that isn’t technically correct. The standard Unix utilities
Tom mentioned don’t normally use SMTP: they run /usr/sbin/sendmail
(either directly or indirectly).

I don’t know whether Domino provides a /usr/sbin/sendmail command: if it
does, the chances are these programs will just work.

If not, it’s possible that you could keep sendmail installed but not
running as a daemon: I believe it will deliver locally and make one mail
submission attempt if it is just run as /usr/sbin/sendmail. (If the
computer it’s trying to send email to is down, it won’t retry, though).
Or you could try ssmtp, which is designed for this sort of purpose.

Another option is mentioned in man crond:
    -m  This  option allows you to specify a shell command string to use
        for sending cron mail output instead of sendmail(8).  This com-
        mand  must  accept a fully formatted mail message (with headers)
        on stdin and send it as a mail message to the recipients speci-
        fied in the mail headers.

A look at /etc/init.d/crond suggests that an executable file called
/etc/sysconfig/crond with this line in it:
CRONDARGS=’-m /path/to/sendmail-like-command’
will allow you to specify cron arguments in a way that won’t get
over-written by system updates.

Logwatch runs from cron, so fixing cron will fix logwatch.

For the mail command, mailx suggests /etc/mailrc gives you the option to
send email via SMTP.

Note that the cronie RPM requires /usr/sbin/sendmail by name: if you
want to remove the sendmail package entirely, you’ll either have to
rpm -e --force it, or install something like ssmtp (which provides
/usr/sbin/sendmail).

Hope this helps,

James.

[Nifty Fedora Mitch]

On Thu, Feb 19, 2009 at 09:35:26PM +0000, James Wilkinson wrote:
> Sender: [e-mail]
>
> Tom Van Looy wrote:
> > Hi
> >
> > We are installing Domino on Fedora (9).  The (IBM and Redhat) manuals
> > tell you to disable sendmail and remove it from the runlevels.
> >
> > Great! But, ... that breaks all the housekeeping stuff right? How do we
> > need to configure things to make sure the mail command, cron, logwatch,
> > etc. keep working?
>
> Phil Meyer wrote:
> > As long as 'something' is listening on port 25, those reports should work.
>
> I believe that isn’t technically correct. The standard Unix utilities
> Tom mentioned don’t normally use SMTP: they run /usr/sbin/sendmail
> (either directly or indirectly).
>
> I don’t know whether Domino provides a /usr/sbin/sendmail command: if it
> does, the chances are these programs will just work.
>
> If not, it’s possible that you could keep sendmail installed but not
> running as a daemon: I believe it will deliver locally and make one mail
> submission attempt if it is just run as /usr/sbin/sendmail. (If the
> computer it’s trying to send email to is down, it won’t retry, though).
> Or you could try ssmtp, which is designed for this sort of purpose.
>
> Another option is mentioned in man crond:
>     -m  This  option allows you to specify a shell command string to use
>         for sending cron mail output instead of sendmail(8).  This com-
>         mand  must  accept a fully formatted mail message (with headers)
>         on stdin and send it as a mail message to the recipients speci-
>         fied in the mail headers.
>
> A look at /etc/init.d/crond suggests that an executable file called
> /etc/sysconfig/crond with this line in it:
> CRONDARGS=’-m /path/to/sendmail-like-command’
> will allow you to specify cron arguments in a way that won’t get
> over-written by system updates.
>
> Logwatch runs from cron, so fixing cron will fix logwatch.
>
> For the mail command, mailx suggests /etc/mailrc gives you the option to
> send email via SMTP.
>
> Note that the cronie RPM requires /usr/sbin/sendmail by name: if you
> want to remove the sendmail package entirely, you’ll either have to
> rpm -e --force it, or install something like ssmtp (which provides
> /usr/sbin/sendmail).

Local delivery can be done with procmail.
Nothing has to listen on 25.

Go with the documented solution and if needed pull sendmail back into the 
system...   In some ways this should be very much the same as switching
from sendmail to postfix i.e.

Postfix is a Mail Transport Agent (MTA)

A google or yahoo search of "domino MTA"
does find links that support my assertion
that Domino is a Mail Transoport Agent.

Poor old Charlie on the MTA.... Will he ever return.

[James Wilkinson]

Nifty Fedora Mitch wrote:
> Local delivery can be done with procmail.

Yes, but if the command expects to use /usr/sbin/sendmail to send the
mail, and that command isn’t there…
> Nothing has to listen on 25.

It might help if Domino did…
> Go with the documented solution and if needed pull sendmail back into the 
> system...   In some ways this should be very much the same as switching
> from sendmail to postfix i.e.
> Postfix is a Mail Transport Agent (MTA)
>
> A google or yahoo search of "domino MTA"
> does find links that support my assertion
> that Domino is a Mail Transoport Agent.

You’re missing the point. Postfix provides a /usr/sbin/sendmail
compatible program (as do qmail and exim, I understand) so it can be a
drop-in replacement to sendmail. The question is not whether Domino is a
MTA, but whether it is an MTA with a sendmail-compatible command line.

Hope this helps,

James.

[James Wilkinson]

Nifty Fedora Mitch wrote:
> Nothing has to listen on 25.

I snarked:
> It might help if Domino did…

By which I meant “if the system is to act as a Domino MTA”, not for the
purposes of delivering Linux system email.

Sorry if that wasn’t clear.

James.

[Anne Wilson]

On Saturday 21 February 2009 14:57:43 James Wilkinson wrote:
> Nifty Fedora Mitch wrote:
> > Local delivery can be done with procmail.
>
> Yes, but if the command expects to use /usr/sbin/sendmail to send the
> mail, and that command isn’t there…

If sendmail is removed, does that imply that you have configured 
postfix.sendmail to do the job?

Anne

[James Wilkinson]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> If sendmail is removed, does that imply that you have configured 
> postfix.sendmail to do the job?

If postfix is installed then sendmail is removed, the Fedora
alternatives system will do that for you. man alternatives says:
    “name” [in this case, sendmail] will be updated to point to another
    appropriate alternative, or removed if there is no such alternative
    left.

I very much doubt this will work for Domino.

James.

[Anne Wilson]

On Saturday 21 February 2009 18:47:04 James Wilkinson wrote:
> Anne Wilson wrote:
> > If sendmail is removed, does that imply that you have configured
> > postfix.sendmail to do the job?
>
> If postfix is installed then sendmail is removed, the Fedora
> alternatives system will do that for you. man alternatives says:
>     “name” [in this case, sendmail] will be updated to point to another
>     appropriate alternative, or removed if there is no such alternative
>     left.

If postfix is replacing sendmail, it's 'transport' database will have to be 
configured.
> I very much doubt this will work for Domino.

Couldn't say - I've no experience of that - but generally, once set up it is 
transparent.

It was just a though, following the lines that others have taken - if you have 
removed sendmail, *something* has to do the job.

Anne

[James Wilkinson]

Anne Wilson wrote:
> If postfix is replacing sendmail, it's 'transport' database will have to be 
> configured.

Well, it’s always a good idea to check the configuration for any new MTA
to suit your site. But postfix will work out-of-the-box – for local
delivery, or if you’re happy for it to send e-mails direct to MX (i.e.
directly to the computer listed in DNS as being responsible for that
domain. If that computer is outside your organisation, and you’re on a
dynamic IP address, you might have problems with spam filters.)

James.

[Nifty Fedora Mitch]

On Sat, Feb 21, 2009 at 02:57:43PM +0000, James Wilkinson wrote:
> Nifty Fedora Mitch wrote:
> > Local delivery can be done with procmail.
>
> Yes, but if the command expects to use /usr/sbin/sendmail to send the
> mail, and that command isn’t there…
> > Nothing has to listen on 25.
>
> It might help if Domino did…
> > Go with the documented solution and if needed pull sendmail back into the 
> > system...   In some ways this should be very much the same as switching
> > from sendmail to postfix i.e.
> > Postfix is a Mail Transport Agent (MTA)
> >
> > A google or yahoo search of "domino MTA"
> > does find links that support my assertion
> > that Domino is a Mail Transoport Agent.
>
> You’re missing the point. Postfix provides ....

....
> Hope this helps,

Domino is moderatly expensive and it is well supported by
the vendor.   Put them to work....!

http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/ls-Internet_messaging_with_t...

If yum/ rpm demand that you install postfix or sendmail pick one
and just "chkconfig $it off".

But seriously, Domino/Lotus has a rich support community
and while we can speculate on what it is and is not
the vendor has facts.  Put the vendor to work....