sendmail Segmentation fault

[mikebw at bilow.bilow.uu.ids.net (Mike Bilow)]

David Kramer wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:

 DK> When I try to run sendmail with any parameters (or none), I
 DK> get a Segmentation fault, sometimes with a core dump.

Sendmail certainly should be able to run as a standalone executable.  The most
likely causes of a core dump would be that there are non-standard hardcoded
paths in it, usually for "/etc/sendmail.cf" as "/etc/mail/sendmail.cf".  I do
not have experience with Red Hat, but some distributions (Debian) store all of
the real mail files in "/etc/mail" and create a symbolic link so that
"/etc/sendmail.cf" -> "/etc/mail/sendmail.cf".  While a missing configuration
file should not cause a core dump, a corrupt one could.

 DK> My setup is Redhat 5.1 i386 on a P133, 40MB RAM.  THis is a
 DK> firewall to a cablemodem, so sendmail would be nice ;)

If you really are running on a 386 chip, a lot of the packaged binaries will be
unsuitable becuase they are built for a 486.  However, a problem like this
would probably affect a lot more than just Sendmail, and you would end up
having to rebuild most of your binaries including the kernel.  You can always
get the Sendmail sources from "http://www.sendmail.org"; and build your own.

 DK> I was having problems where mail was not getting delivered
 DK> to my box.  I noticed that a sendmail-8.9.1-2 rpm was
 DK> available (I had 8.8.something), so I grabbed it and tried
 DK> to upgrade.  I'm not sure if it failed or not but I got bad
 DK> vibes from it.

 DK> [root at kramer bin]# rpm -q sendmail
 DK> sendmail-8.9.1-2
 DK> [root at kramer bin]# rpm --verify sendmail-8.9.1-2
 DK> [root at kramer bin]# 

I can assure you that Sendmail 8.9.1 is a drop-in replacement for Sendmail
8.8.8 on Linux ordinarily.  You should get a complaint about the configuration
file format upgrading from V7 to V8, but that's minor and can be dealt with
later.  I built my 8.9.1 from source and had no problem, but I am not running
Red Hat, either.  My system is also a real mess in some ways, using a hybrid
libc5/libc6 installation because I needed libc6 for PostgreSQL.

 DK> I tried uninstalling then installing again,and it complained
 DK> about dependencies, but I overrode them because I was just
 DK> reinstalling anyway. There is a remote possibility that I
 DK> tried installing, not updating. Could that have done this?

Well, what did you expect?  Sendmail has dependencies such as the database
system, dbm/ndbm, and I can see this causing any number of problems.  I suggest
that you check on what the dependencies are and try to determine why you
overrode them.

 DK> I have NO idea how to proceed from here.  I'm very
 DK> technical, and pretty good with sysadmin type stuff, but how
 DK> do you even research a problem like this?

Start with the dependency issue.  You might also run "ldd" over the Sendmail
binary and make sure it is linked for the proper libraries on your system.
 
-- Mike


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