[Chapter 3] 3.5 Things to Try
Author: Bryan Costales & Eric Allman
Date: 1999-01-06T18:33:05Z

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| Chapter 3 The Roles of sendmail |

## 3.5 Things to Try

- When your machine boots, it executes the commands in one or more Bourne shell scripts. Examine the script that runs the sendmail program in daemon mode. Write a small Bourne shell script that checks for the existence of the echo(1) program and then executes that program. Model it around the way sendmail is run.

- For each program that is mentioned in your configuration file's `M` lines (like /bin/mail and /bin/uux), read the appropriate online manual page. Examine the possible command-line arguments to determine how envelope information is passed. Compare what you discover to the `A=` part of each corresponding `M` line.

- Locate all the files mentioned in `O` lines in your configuration file. For any that exist, what kind of file is it: data or text? If it is text, read it. What purpose do you suppose it has?

3.4 Role as a Daemon |  | 4. How to Run sendmail