Daemon Dancing in the Dark

How to turn off sendmail

It's not as easy as it used to be to turn off sendmail. Not too long ago, you merely had to add:

sendmail_enable="no"

to your /etc/rc.conf and the sendmail daemon wouldn't start.

But sendmail added an option early in 2003:
Sendmail FAQ, Section 3

And this makes it a little more difficult. In addition, they made it easier to add a different MTA (Mail Transport Agent), like Postfix say. So now you have to follow the instructions in /usr/src/UPDATING:

"20020404:
        New sendmail startup scripts have been installed to make it
        easier to use alternative MTAs with FreeBSD.  Setting the rc.conf
        variable sendmail_enable to "NO" no longer prevents any sendmail
        daemons from starting.  Instead, either set sendmail_enable to
        "NONE" or change mta_start_script to a script for starting
        an alternative MTA.  Setting mta_start_script to "" will
        also prevent any MTA from being started at boot."

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Posted by jdarnold at 05:43 PM | TrackBack