More often than not, the words sendmail configuration strike dread in the hearts of sendmail and system administrators--and not without reason. sendmail configuration languages are as complex as any other programming languages, but used much more infrequently--only when sendmail is installed or configured. The average system administrator doesn't get enough practice to truly master this inscrutable technology.Fortunately, there's help. The sendmail Cookbook provides step-by-step solutions for the administrator who needs to solve configuration problems fast. Say you need to configure sendmail to relay mail for your clients without creating an open relay that will be abused by spammers. A recipe in the Cookbook shows you how to do just that. No more wading through pages of dense documentation and tutorials and creating your own custom solution--just go directly to the recipe that addresses your specific problem.Each recipe in the sendmail Cookbook outlines a configuration problem, presents the configuration code that solves that problem, and then explains the code in detail. The discussion of the code is critical because it provides the insight you need to tweak the code for your own circumstances.The sendmail Cookbook begins with an overview of the configuration languages, offering a quick how-to for downloading and compiling the sendmail distribution. Next, you'll find a baseline configuration recipe upon which many of the subsequent configurations, or recipes, in the book are based. Recipes in the following chapters stand on their own and offer solutions for properly configuring important sendmail functions such as:

• Delivering and forwarding mail
• Relaying
• Masquerading
• Routing mail
• Controlling spam
• Strong authentication
• Securing the mail transport
• Managing the queue
• Securing sendmail