Re: SENDMAIL and mail500 delivery agent

["Kurt D. Zeilenga" <kurt@boolean.net>]

At 04:17 PM 11/4/99 +0900, Kristina wrote:
>
>I was just wondering if I need to recompile Sendmail 8.9.3 to be
>able to use the mail500 delivery agent.

No.  mail500 is a add-on.  It provides additional handling not
offerred by sendmail integrated LDAP code.

mail500 understands a messaging schema and uses directory
information conforming to this schema to provide services beyond
simple mapping.  It knows, for example, that members of a group
may be specified by DN and that it must fetch the e-mail address
from member entries.

Though mail500 is not for everyone, it does provide
functionality not found in so-called LDAP-aware MTAs (including
sendmail w/ integrated LDAP support).  These MTAs tend to only
provide basic mapping services based upon simple ldap searches.

The significant drawback to mail500 is that it is not integrated
into the MTA.  The means that it must resubmit messages back to
the MTA.

>Also, how do I configure
>OpenLDAP to use the mail500 delivery agent?

In OpenLDAP 1.2, mail500 is configured (primarily) by modifying
the actual code and recompiling.  This could be considerred by
some an additional drawback.

In the long term, we hope that such capabilities will integrated
directly into MTAs (sendmail or others).  I am still looking for
a quality, open-source Directory-enabled MTA.   A directory-enabled
MTA would be able to utilize information conforming to a
sophisticated messaging schema.  (Again, most open source MTAs are
only "LDAP-aware", that is, they can only use LDAP to do simple
mappings).

Kurt

 

----
Kurt D. Zeilenga		<kurt@boolean.net>
Net Boolean Incorporated	<http://www.boolean.net/>