ISBN 1-56592-278-6   Price £5 approximately
Bryan Costalles  &  Eric Allman
5 Chapters
 

Chapter List

           Preface

     1    How to Run
     2    The sendmail.cf File
     3    Databases
     4    Configuring with m4
 

Synopsis

      The pocket reference series is well known for the large amount of information that is packed into a very small space.  The Sendmail desktop reference gives most of the things that may be needed to either use Sendmail or to begin to use it to learn more.

Review

Everyone knows how good the O'Reilly books can be but it's not until you break into the pocket reference series that you begin to realise the usefulness of having one of their books around in case of emergencies or forgetfulness.  The O'Reilly "bat book" is used by many system admins to get useful info about sendmail that isn't available anywhere else.  Even the Sendmail docs can be a bit misleading at times.

The first chapter gives a few examples of rule sets and debug options.  Very helpful ?  The Sendmail .cf file is the part that makes everything work.  There's a good bit of help for that.  Databases and configuring with M4 finish off with more than the essentials.

This 68 page booklet is packed with all sorts of stuff that you should find to be useful.  Many people that I know of keep a bat book on the shelf just in case of that sudden problem with memory breakdown.  Well worth buying for that short train journey :-)
 

Review by Richard Ibbotson