Summary of support files

This is a summary of the support files that sendmail creates or generates. Many of these can be changed by editing the sendmail.cf file; these are noted below.

/usr/lib/sendmail

binary of sendmail; should be setuid root.

/usr/bin/newaliases

link to /usr/lib/sendmail; causes the alias database to be rebuilt. Running this program is completely equivalent to giving sendmail the -bi flag.

/usr/bin/mailq

prints a listing of the mail queue. This program is equivalent to using the -bp flag to sendmail.

/usr/lib/sendmail.cf

configuration file, in textual form.

/usr/lib/sendmail.hf

help file used by the SMTP HELP command; the actual path of this file is defined in the H option of the sendmail.cf file.

/usr/lib/sendmail.st

statistics file. If you wish to collect statistics about your mail traffic, you should create this file:

   cp /dev/null /usr/lib/sendmail.st
   chmod 666 /usr/lib/sendmail.st

Print this file with the command mailstats(ADMN). The actual path of this file is defined in the S option of the sendmail.cf file.

/etc/sendmail.pid

process id file. Created in daemon mode; contains the process id of the current SMTP daemon. If you use this in scripts, use ``head -1'' to get just the first line; later versions of sendmail may add information to subsequent lines.

/usr/lib/mail/aliases

textual version of the alias file.

/usr/lib/mail/aliases.db

alias file in db format.

/usr/spool/mqueue

directory in which the mail queue and temporary files reside; this directory should be mode 700 and owned by root; the actual path of this directory is defined in the Q option of the sendmail.cf file.

/usr/spool/mqueue/qf*

control (queue) files for messages.

/usr/spool/mqueue/df*

data files.

/usr/spool/mqueue/tf*

temporary versions of the qf files, used during queue-file rebuild.

/usr/spool/mqueue/xf*

transcript of the current session.