202 lines
8.7 KiB
Plaintext
202 lines
8.7 KiB
Plaintext
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K N O W N B U G S I N S E N D M A I L
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(for 8.9.3)
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The following are bugs or deficiencies in sendmail that I am aware of
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but which have not been fixed in the current release. You probably
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want to get the most up to date version of this from ftp.sendmail.org
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in /pub/sendmail/KNOWNBUGS. For descriptions of bugs that have been
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fixed, see the file RELEASE_NOTES (in the root directory of the sendmail
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distribution).
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This list is not guaranteed to be complete.
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* Null bytes are not handled properly in headers.
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Sendmail should handle full binary data. As it stands, it handles
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all values in the body, but only 0x01-0x80 and 0xA0-0xFF in
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the header. Notably missing is 0x00, which would require a major
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restructuring of the code -- for example, almost no C library support
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could be used to handle strings.
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* Duplicate error messages.
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Sometimes identical, duplicate error messages can be generated. As
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near as I can tell, this is rare and relatively innocuous.
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* $c (hop count) macro improperly set.
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The $c macro is supposed to contain the current hop count, for use
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when calling a mailer. This macro is initialized too early, and
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is always zero (or the value of the -c command line flag, if any).
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This macro will probably be removed entirely in a future release;
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I don't believe there are any mailers left that require it.
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* \231 considered harmful.
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Header addresses that have the \231 character (and possibly others
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in the range \201 - \237) behave in odd and usually unexpected ways.
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* accept() problem on SVR4.
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Apparently, the sendmail daemon loop (doing accept()s on the network)
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can get into a weird state on SVR4; it starts logging ``SYSERR:
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getrequests: accept: Protocol Error''. The workaround is to kill
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and restart the sendmail daemon. We don't have an SVR4 system at
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Berkeley that carries more than token mail load, so I can't validate
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this. It is likely to be a glitch in the sockets emulation, since
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"Protocol Error" is not possible error code with Berkeley TCP/IP.
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I've also had someone report the message ``sendmail: accept:
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SIOCGPGRP failed errno 22'' on an SVR4 system. This message is
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not in the sendmail source code, so I assume it is also a bug
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in the sockets emulation. (Errno 22 is EINVAL "Invalid Argument"
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on all the systems I have available, including Solaris 2.x.)
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Apparently, this problem is due to linking -lc before -lsocket;
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if you are having this problem, check your Makefile.
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* accept() problem on Linux.
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The accept() in sendmail daemon loop can return ETIMEDOUT. An
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error is reported to syslog:
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Jun 9 17:14:12 hostname sendmail[207]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root):
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getrequests: accept: Connection timed out
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"Connection timed out" is not documented as a valid return from
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accept(2) and this was believed to be a bug in the Linux kernel.
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Later information from the Linux kernel group states that Linux
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2.0 kernels follow RFC1122 while sendmail follows the original BSD
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(now POSIX 1003.1g draft) specification. The 2.1.X and later kernels
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will follow the POSIX draft.
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* Excessive mailing list nesting can run out of file descriptors.
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If you have a mailing list that includes lots of other mailing
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lists, each of which has a separate owner, you can run out of
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file descriptors. Each mailing list with a separate owner uses
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one open file descriptor (prior to 8.6.6 it was three open
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file descriptors per list). This is particularly egregious if
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you have your connection cache set to be large.
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* Connection caching breaks if you pass the port number as an argument.
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If you have a definition such as:
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Mport, P=[IPC], F=kmDFMuX, S=11/31, R=21,
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M=2100000, T=DNS/RFC822/SMTP,
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A=IPC [127.0.0.1] $h
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(i.e., where $h is the port number instead of the host name) the
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connection caching code will break because it won't notice that
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two messages addressed to different ports should use different
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connections.
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* ESMTP SIZE underestimates the size of a message
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Sendmail makes no allowance for headers that it adds, nor does it
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account for the SMTP on-the-wire \r\n expansion. It probably doesn't
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allow for 8->7 bit MIME conversions either.
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* Paths to programs being executed and the mode of program files are
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not checked. Essentially, the RunProgramInUnsafeDirPath and
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RunWritableProgram bits in the DontBlameSendmail option are always
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set. This is not a problem if your system is well managed (that is,
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if binaries and system directories are mode 755 instead of something
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foolish like 777).
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* 8-bit data in GECOS field
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If the GECOS (personal name) information in the passwd file contains
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8-bit characters, those characters can be included in the message
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header, which can cause problems when sending SMTP to hosts that
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only accept 7-bit characters.
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* 8->7 bit MIME conversion
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When sendmail is doing 8->7 bit MIME conversions, and the message
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contains certain MIME body types that cannot be converted to 7-bit,
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sendmail will strip the message to 7-bit.
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* 7->8 bit MIME conversion
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If a message that is encoded as 7-bit MIME is converted to 8-bit and
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that message when decoded is illegal (e.g., because of long lines or
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illegal characters), sendmail can produce an illegal message.
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* MIME encoded full name phrases in the From: header
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If a full name phrase includes characters from MustQuoteChars, sendmail
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will quote the entire full name phrase. If MustQuoteChars includes
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characters which are not special characters according to STD 11 (RFC
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822), this quotation can interfere with MIME encoded full name phrases.
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By default, sendmail includes the single quote character (') in
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MustQuoteChars even though it is not listed as a special character in
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STD 11.
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* bestmx map with -z flag truncates the list of MX hosts
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A bestmx map configured with the -z flag will truncate the list
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of MX hosts. This prevents creation of strings which are too
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long for ruleset parsing. This can have an adverse effect on the
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relay_based_on_MX feature.
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* Saving to ~sender/dead.letter fails if su'ed to root
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If ErrorMode is set to print and an error in sending mail occurs,
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the normal action is to print a message to the screen and append
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the message to a dead.letter file in the sender's home directory.
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In the case where the sender is using su to act as root, the file
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safety checks prevent sendmail from saving the dead.letter file
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because the sender's uid and the current real uid do not match.
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* Berkeley DB 2.X race condition with fcntl() locking
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There is a race condition for Berkeley DB 2.X databases on
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operating systems which use fcntl() style locking, such as
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Solaris. Sendmail locks the map before calling db_open() to
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prevent others from modifying the map while it is being opened.
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Unfortunately, Berkeley DB opens the map, closes it, and then
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reopens it. fcntl() locking drops the lock when any file
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descriptor pointing to the file is closed, even if it is a
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different file descriptor than the one used to initially lock
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the file. As a result there is a possibility that entries in a
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map might not be found during a map rebuild. As a workaround,
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you can use makemap to build a map with a new name and then
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"mv" the new db file to replace the old one.
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Sleepycat Software has added code to avoid this race condition to
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Berkeley DB versions after 2.7.5.
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* File open timeouts not available on hard mounted NFS file systems
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Since SIGALRM does not interrupt an RPC call for hard mounted
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NFS file systems, it is impossible to implement a timeout on a file
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open operation. Therefore, while the NFS server is not responding,
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attempts to open a file on that server will hang. Systems with
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local mail delivery and NFS hard mounted home directories should be
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avoided, as attempts to open the forward files could hang.
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* Race condition for delivery to setuid files
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Sendmail will deliver to a fail if the file is owned by the DefaultUser
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or has the setuid bit set. Unfortunately, some systems clear that bit
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when a file is modified. Sendmail compensates by resetting the file mode
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back to it's original settings. Unfortunately, there's still a
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permission failure race as sendmail checks the permissions before locking
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the file. This is unavoidable as sendmail must verify the file is safe
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to open before opening it. A file can not be locked until it is open.
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* Potential denial of service attack with AutoRebuildAliases
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There is a potential for a denial of service attack if the
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AutoRebuildAliases option is set as a user can kill the sendmail process
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while it is rebuilding the aliases file leaving it in an inconsistent
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state. This option and it's use is deprecated and will be removed from a
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future version of sendmail.
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$Revision: 8.43 $, Last updated $Date: 1999/11/17 18:56:09 $
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