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Document Revision Control Information:
   mmuegel
   /usr/local/ustart/src/mail-tools/dist/foo/README,v
   1.1 of 1993/07/28 08:12:53
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1. Introduction
---------------

These tools may be of use to those sites using sendmail. Both are written in
Perl. Our site, Mot.COM, receives a ton of mail being a top-level domain
gateway. We have over 24 domains under us. Needless to say, we must have
a robust mail system or my head, and others, would be on the chopping block.

2. Description
--------------

The first tool, cqueue, checks the sendmail queue for problems. We use
it to flag problems with subdomain mail servers (and even our own servers
once in a while ;-). We run it via a cron job every hour during the day.
You may find this too frequent, however. 

The other program, postclip, is used to "filter" non-deliverable NDNs that
get sent to our Postmaster account now and then. This ensures privacy of
e-mail and helps avoid disk problems from huge NDNs. It is different than
a brute force "just keep the header" approach because it tries hard to keep
other parts of the message that look like non-delivery information.

Both have been used for some time at our site with no problems. Everything 
you need should be in this distribution: source, manual pages, and support 
libs. See the manual pages for a complete description of each tool.

3. Installation
---------------

No fancy Makefile simply because these tools are all under a large
hierarchy at my site. Installation should be a snap, however. Install
the nroff(1) man(5) manual pages from the man subdirectory to the
appropriate directory on your system. This might be something like
/usr/local/man/man1.

Next, install all of the Perl libraries located in the lib subdirectory
to your Perl library area. /usr/local/lib/perl is a good bet. The person
who installed Perl at your site will be able to tell you for sure. 

Finally, you need to install the programs. Note that cqueue wants to
run setuid root by default. This is because the sendmail queue is normally
only readable by root or some special group. In order to let any user
run this suidperl is used. suidperl allows a Perl program to run with the
privileges of another user. 

You will have to edit both the cqueue and postclip programs to change
the #! line at the top of each. Just change the pathname to whatever is
appropriate on your system. Note that Larry Wall's fixin program from
the Camel book can also be used to do this. It is very handy. It changes
#! lines by looking at your PATH.

If you do not have suidperl on your system change the #! line in cqueue
to reference perl instead of suidperl.

You may also wish to change some constants in cqueue. $DEF_QUEUE should be
changed to your queue directory if it is not /usr/spool/mqueue. $DEF_TIME
could be changed easy enough also. It is the time spec for the time duration
after which a mail message will be reported on if the -a option has not been
specified. See the manual page for more information and the format of this
constant (same as the -t argument). Then again, neither of these has to
be changed. Command line options are there to override their default
values.

After you have edited the programs as necessary, all that remains is to
install them to some executable directory. Install postclip mode 555
and cqueue mode 4555 with owner root (if using suidperl) or mode 555
(if not using suidperl).

4. Gripes, Comments, Etc
------------------------

If you start using either of these let me know. I have other mail tools I
will likely post in the future if these prove useful. Also, if you think
something is just plain dumb/wrong/stupid let me know!

Cheers,
-Mike

--
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Michael S. Muegel                    | Internet E-Mail:    mmuegel@mot.com |
| UNIX Applications Startup Group      | Moto Dist E-Mail:   X10090          |
| Corporate Information Office         | Voice:              (708) 576-0507  |
| Motorola                             | Fax:                (708) 576-4153  |
+----------------------------------------------------------------------------+
