Beginning with V8.7, the new rule testing commands allow you to print
the value of a defined macro and the members of a class.
With either command, you may use single-character or multicharacter
macro names.
Both commands begin with a $
character. An error is caused
if nothing follows that $
:
Name required for macro/class
If an =
character follows, sendmail will display the
requested class. Otherwise, the value of the macro is displayed:
$X display the value of the X macro $=X list the members of the class X
The $
rule-testing command causes sendmail to print the
value of a defined macro. The form for this command looks like this:
$X show value of the single character macro name X ${YYY} show value of the multi-character macro name YYY
Only one macro may be listed per line. If more than one is listed, all but the first is ignored:
$X $Y ignored
One use for this command might be in solving the problem of duplicate domains.
For example, suppose you just installed a new configuration file and
discovered that your host was no longer known as here.our.domain but
instead wrongly had an extra domain attached like this: here.our.domain.our.domain.
To check the value of
$j
(see Section 31.10.20, $j), which should contain the canonical
name of your host, you could run sendmail in rule-testing mode:
ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked) Enter <ruleset> <address> >$j
$w.our.domain >
This looks right because $w
(see Section 31.10.40, $w)
is supposed to contain our short hostname.
But just to check, you could also print the value of $w
:
>$w
here.our.domain
Aha! Somehow, $w
got the full canonical name.
A quick scan of your .mc file (see Section 19.2, "Build with m4")
turns up this error:
LOCAL_CONFIG Dwhere.our.domain # $w is supposed to be full - joachim
Apparently, your assistant, Joachim, mistakenly thought that new sendmail was wrong. By deleting the offending line and creating a new configuration file, you can take care of the problem.
The $=
rule-testing command tells sendmail to print all the
members for a class. The class name must immediately follow the
=
with no intervening space, or the name is ignored. Both single-character and multicharacter
names may be used:
$= X the X is ignored $=X list the members of the class X $={xxx} list the members of the class xxx
The list of members (if any) is printed one per line:
> $=w here.our.domain here [123.45.67.89] fax fax.our.domain >
To illustrate one use for this command, imagine that you just made
the local host the FTP server for your site. Of course, you were careful
to modify the configuration file and add fax and fax.our.domain
to the $=w
class in it. But incoming mail to fax.our.domain
is still failing. You run sendmail in rule-testing mode, as above,
to verify that the correct entries are in $=w
:
here.our.domain here [123.45.67.89] fax correct fax.our.domain correct
Since they are correct, it could be that you made the mistake of changing the configuration file and failing to restart the daemon (see Section 4.1.1, "Daemon Mode (-bd)"). The following command line fixes the problem (see Section 26.3.2, "SIGHUP Restart"):
#kill -HUP `head -1 /etc/sendmail.pid`