Sendmail version 8.8.7

[rsekhar]

Hi All,

I have redhat server 7.0 running sendmail 8.8.7, can't upgrade to the latest version, my server has several virtual domains and all these domains use the server for only receiving email (they use their ISP to send email).
How do I stop spammers from using my server.
Any help will be appreciated

Thanks a lot
Sekhar

 

[StarTAC]

u need to close off your mail relay access using the /etc/mail/access file.. in this file, u can specify which hosts are allowed to relay through your server...

although u say u can't, i really hope u can upgrade your SMTP server.. try running Postfix.. it's very secure, and fast...

good luck....

 

[rsekhar]

Hi StarTAC,
Can I specify only the my domain and the virtual domains in the access file. will it reject mail from others?

thanks

 

[rsekhar]

Hi,

StarTAC has advised me to upgrade my server from 8.8.7. Can anyone give me step-by-step instructions for upgrading the sendmail server to the latest version say 8.11 or 8.12, I have virtual email domains running on the server.

Thanks for all the help

 

[RhythmAce]

You can download the rpm package from

http://www.sendmail.org

then run the following command:

rpm -Uvh *.rpm

This will do an upgrade rather than a new install which would overwrite your config files. Just to play it say I would still backup the config files anyway. If you get the lates version of sendmail, you will see that they moved some of the files that used to be in /etc/ to /etc/mail/. For example, the sendmail.mc and sendmail.cf files are both in /etc/mail/. If all goes well, you will need to recompile sendmail.mc with the following command:

m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

If you made changes to access, you will need to rebuild that database also:

makemap hash /etc/mail/access.db < /etc/mail/access

Double check the paths first, they may be different on your system.

 

[StarTAC]

to do it that way, using Exim, another versatile MTA, would do it for.. so u ensure that mail relay is allowed based on two criteria...

o the IP address/network of your clients...
o the domain name of your client...

both of these should match based on what u have configured...

in sendmail.. it's good enough if u can allow relay on a per-user basis, for more security... instead of allowing your entire network.. i mean, if your clients have their own mail server, or don't need to use your mail server, u don't need to insert their networks into your /etc/mail/access file...

for virtual domains, please see the virtusertable... u can also specify which domains u will receive and process incoming e-mail for.. with the file /etc/mail/sendmail.cw ... if u are going to be a backup for someone else, or a friend, then read about and create the file /etc/mail/relay-domains ...

as u can see, it's very flexible, but this is only with my experience on Sendmail-8.10 +.. i stopped using sendmail after version 8.12 .. and moved to Postfix... it's much faster, even more flexible, and more secure...

good luck..

 

[rsekhar]

Ok thanks all of you guys. I added the code from sendmail.org for the anti relaying and it works fine. Now my server is not relaying mail from outside domains.

One problem though, users have been complaining of spamming any tips for controlling spam on the sendmail server 8.8.7.

Thanks to all the experts

 

[StarTAC]

upgrade.. life is always easier that way..

my policy, if there's a better way of doing it, then go that way..

good luck..