The Answer Gang

masquerade in sendmail is broken.

From Clark Ashton Smith

Answered By Ben Okopnik

In issue 21 there was an article by the "The Answer Guy" which explained how to use the masquerade feature in a local sendmail configuration.

[Ben] Issue 21 is from 1997. Considering how much Linux has changed since those days, and how closely "sendmail" is tied into all those changes, relying on information that old is not going to get you good results.

On the other hand, the information that is available for setting up sendmail is generally pretty poor, and not at all intended for the casual user; it's pretty nightmarish out there.

It worked fine with Redhat 5.2 Linux, but I just tried it on Redhat 6.0 and the FEATURE(nodns) reports that it is a no-op and I should use the service.switch file to disable dns lookup. Well after 5 hours of reading sendmail faqs, newsgroups and tips I am no closer to making this work.

I have a simple network with a ppp connection to the internet. Many folks out there must have similar setups.

Could someone please show us how to get the masquerade feature working again?

[Ben] Well, you could look at my article in issue 58, called "Configuring Sendmail in RedHat 6.2"; this might be a bit more up to date, and tells you how to do masquerading. Given the situation that you're in, though, you might want to try installing "masqmail" - all the features you need in your situation, made to work well with a masquerading setup, works with multiple ISPs, and it is much less complex than "sendmail".

If you set it up and it does what you need, you owe the Oracle an article on your experience. <grin> Just kidding. Hope this helps.

[Heather] Actually, we really could use the article I've tried masqmail and it looked okay, but, its minimal documentation seems to assume that you'll be using masqdialer to drive your dialup connection. I never quite got around to spending the time to make it deal with changing, but non-dialed connections (such as laptops often encounter). A little AnswerGang message or even article about your experience setting it up properly without that assumption, would be really handy. Alternatively, now you also know about masqdial too, and it may make dialing into your ISPs easier.

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Published in issue 65 of Linux Gazette April 2001

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