An unsafe configuration file prevents all but root from setting certain options and
causes sendmail to change its uid and gid to that of the user that ran it. If it is used by someone
other than the superuser (and not in the -bt rule-testing mode), the -OQueueDirectory=path
switch should also be used to set the location of the queue directory. If that location is not
changed, sendmail fails because it cannot chdir(2) into its queue directory.
Prior to V8, the -C command-line switchalso prevented sendmail from ???thawing??? its frozen
configuration file.
One practical use for this command-line switch might be as part of a make(1) file that is
used to generate a cf file from your mc file. Consider, for example, that you maintain the
mc source for your configuration file in a directory that is separate from the sendmail source
directory. If sucha directory were /usr/local/src/sendmail/cf, and if the sendmail source were
located in /usr/local/src/sendmail/8.12.7, you could create a Makefile something like this in
the cf directory:
M4=/usr/ccs/bin/m4 ?†? for Solaris 5.4
CFDIR=../sendmail-8.12.7/cf/
MC_FILE=yourhost ?†? the base name of your mc file
SENDMAIL=/usr/sbin/sendmail ?†? where your sendmail is located
* In practice, freeze files helped you only on systems with very fast I/O relative to their CPU speeds. Although
this was true in the day of the VAX 11/750, improvements in processor technology have reversed this tradeoff.
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