Keeping email working is one of the most important jobs for a network manager. For network managers with UNIX hosts, that means maintaining configuration files for sendmail. Avolio and Vixie have written a book intended to make that job a little easier.

The book takes the form of a couple of introductory tutorial chapters, followed by several chapters about how to configure sendmail, at increasing levels of detail and complexity. Chapter 4 is the best presentation of how to handle sendmail aliases and mailing lists that I have seen. Throughout the book, the writing is usually clear and to the point. There are occasional silly comments, such as suggesting the reader get a cup of coffee before reading a difficult section, but they are not distracting, and sometimes help keep the tone light.

My major criticism of the book is that it is too short. Some topics are not covered in all the detail a network administrator may require. In particular, the discussion of sendmail.cf files is far too short. Another nuisance is that the book documents version 5 of sendmail, while the current release is version 8. There are sometimes visible differences between the two versions.

The alternative to this book is Costales, Allman, and Rickert’s exhaustive 800-page presentation of sendmail [1]. I advise owning both books. For simple problems, the solution is likely to be easier to find in Avolio and Vixie. For hard problems, however, you will probably need the more detailed and up-to-date documentation of Costales, Allman, and Rickert’s work.