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By Matthew Butch-libertyof76@supernet.com
NOTE: This instructions are for 10.2(aka Jaguar) and later ONLY
BSD, the UNIX variant OSX is based on, preforms certain cleanup services in the backround every day. A report of what is done is sent to the root user on the system. The following instructions allow any native OSX mail client(including Mail.app, the GUI application made by Apple included with OS X) to receive them.
Throughout this document, anything in bold is a command to be entered in the terminal.)
Here is a copy of the reports for those who want to decide whether it is worth it to set this up: crondaily.txt, cronmonthly.txt
NOTE: You'll need to know a little bit about Unix to do this. It is also for 10.2 and later ONLY. 10.1 and ealier is a little different. If your a newbie I can help you get through it. Just email me:libertyof76@supernet.com.
The root user must be enabled to receive reports, since that is where it is sent. The root user is called a superuser, and is able to do anything and everything he wants. Apple has disabled it by default, since it is possible to severely corrupt and destroy the entire system. The user that you enter as your name(mjbutch in my case) is an administrator, a more powerful user than others, but not as powerful as root.
| To enable root, do ONE of the following: | |
| a. Start the NetInfo Manager app in the Application Folder on your MacOS X hard drive. Select the Domain Menu, move down to Security menu item, and choose the Authenticate submenu item. Enter your user password. Next, go to the same menu and menu item, and choose Enable Root User. Enter the same password as your user password | |
b. Enter on the command line:
| |
| c. Restart using the MacOS X CD. Under one of the menu's is an Enable root user similar to choice a above |
The root user should be enabled.
Normally, the report(and other mail to root) is sent to /dev/null which is a "black hole". Anything sent there is destroyed. This is set by the .forward file in the root user's directory. You'll want this to be sent to your personal user's account.
First, open up Terminal.app(in the Application folder), now enter
| cd /var/root |
| sudo pico .forward |
Mail should now be sent to forward to your user account.
Because of the way Jagauar is set up, sendmail must be running at all times. Don't worry, it takes up almost no processor usage nor memory space.
To do this we have to edit the hostconfig file. Type in the Terminal:
| sudo pico /etc/hostconfig |
Now, find the MAILSERVER=-NO- line and change the -NO- to -YES- . OSX will launch sendmail at startup.
Sendmail is misconfigured in the MacOS X release. Sendmail is what sends mail from one account to another on the local machine, and to other systems on the internet. It is needed to allow the system report to be sent.
What needs to be done is to recompile the configuration file for sendmail.
Open the Terminal and enter the following there:
| cd /usr/share/sendmail/conf/cf/ |
Next, type:
| cp generic-darwin.mc osx.mc |
Now, we have to edit this file to change the default behavior of sendmail. The first change is to make sendmail ignore the permissions of the root drive. sendmail is really restrictive of the way permissions are, but we can override this behavior. To edit the sendmail configuration file enter:
| sudo pico osx.mc |
That should open up a text editor called pico. Find the line that says "define(`PROCMAIL_MAILER_PATH',`/usr/bin/procmail')". After it add
| define(`confDONT_BLAME_SENDMAIL', `GroupWritableDirPathSafe') |
Now sendmail won't complain about the standard permissions of OSX.
Next, we have to set tell sendmail to ignore domains that can't be resolved. Look for the line "FEATURE(`access_db')dnl" and add the following line afterwards:
| FEATURE(accept_unresolvable_domains) |
Okay, now, we need to save this file and exit. press control-x, press y to save it, and hit return to save it as osx.mc.
Now, we have to "compile" the osx.mc to a format that sendmail can understand. To do this type:
| m4 ../m4/cf.m4 osx.mc > /tmp/sendmail.cf |
That created the file in a temporary location. Now, before we move it into its proper location, lets save the old one in case the new one is corrupted or wrong. So, type
| mv /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf.old |
Finally, move the new one into place
| mv /tmp/sendmail.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf |
The last thing to do is to tell sendmail to restart so it can read the new config file:
| /System/Library/StartupItems/Sendmail/Sendmail restart |
Finally, we have to remove a configuration preference in NetInfo Manager. Open up NetInfo Manager, click on the lock in the lower left corner. Enter your password. Now, click on the "locations" line in the cecond column. "sendmail" should appear in the third column. Click on that, then click the "Delete" button. Hit return or click on "Delete" to confirm deletion. Quit NetInfo Manager.
Sendmail should work now. test it out by entering
| mail root |
Note for Mail.app users: In previous versions of OSX and Mail.app, one could get local mail directly. However, Apple in its strange wisdom decided to remove that functionality. So now everybody has to install and imap server. It doesn't take up much memory, hard drive space, or processor usage at all.
To get the client to read the local mail, an imap server must be setup(thanks to Robert for this hint). Download the most recent version from uwash, or directly here.
Now, Stuffit should uncompress the downloaded file, but make sure you use 6.0.1, as 5.5 will cause problems because it doesn't put the correct line endings in.
Open Terminal and cd to the directory that was unstuffed. Now enter
| cd src/osdep/unix |
| pico env_unix.c |
Next, hit ctrl-x, enter y to write out, and save it as the name that pico gives you. Now go back to the directory of imap(try cd ../../..). Enter
| make osx SSLTYPE=none |
This starts the compiling of the imap server. It'll take a while, so go get something to drink:). For interested people, the reason SSLTYPE is set to none is because the recent code of imap changed. They now default to SSLTYPE of nopwd, meaning the SSL part will connect without a password. However, on OSX, the necessary headers are not included, even though the SSL framework is. Compiling with the default SSLTYPE gives errors because of this. We could download them, but that, just like SSL, aren't necessary for our purposes. The none type tells the make program to ignore the SSL files, and these headers aren't needed. If you are going to be using imap for uses other than just system reports, I suggest support and building in SSL into imap. The instructions can be found in docs/SSLBUILD.
After it is done, you will need to install the build files into the appropriate directory. First check if the /usr/local/sbin directory exists by entering
| cd /usr/local/sbin |
| sudo mkdir /usr/local/sbin |
Now, enter the following commands to copy the daemons to their proper places:
| sudo cp imapd/imapd /usr/local/sbin/imapd |
Next we have to tell the system to recognize and run these services. The first place to do that is the inetd config file, which tells which internet systems to load and run. Open up that file by entering
| sudo pico /etc/inetd.conf |
| imap stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/sbin/imapd imapd |
In order for the imap server to start, you must either restart the machine or send the HUP signal to the inetd process. Logging out won't do. I have't tried this, but the HUP signal should work. To send the HUP signal, enter
| ps auwx | grep inetd |
Note the number to the left of the word root. That's the process ID. Enter that number in place of pid in this command:
| sudo kill -HUP pid |
Open up Mail, and choose Preferences... from the Mail menu. Click Accounts if you're not already there. Click on Create Account, and choose IMAP for the Account type. Enter Local as the Description, and enter your name and email in the respective locations(though these are not really needed. Enter localhost for Incoming mail server Hostn, and your username and password, which is the same as the MacOS X ones. Next, click Advanced, then enter Library/Mail/imapstore in the box labeled IMAP Path Prefix box. Finally, click OK.
This will vary from client to client. The procedure should be similar however. You might want to read the manual or help files for you client for information on how exactly to set it up like here. Basically, create a new IMAP account. For the any addresses, enter 127.0.0.1. Enter the User Name and Password that you set up MacOS X with for the resepective settings in the setup window.
To test the system, open up the terminal. Enter
| mail root |
Enter some words, followed by a dot in a line by itself. Now open up Mail, and check your mail. It should work. If it doesn't, open up the Console application in the Application folder. See if any error messages relating to mail comes up. You can also open the mail specific log. To do that, go to the Console, choose Open Log from the Console menu, type /var/log in the go to box, then choose mail.log. If you can't figure it out send me some email and I'd be glad to help you out.
For some reason, something is messed up with periodic, which is what runs the scripts that do the clean up and send the reports that we are trying to receive. The only solution I came up with is to edit the crontab file to skip using periodic, and just run the scripts manually.
Open up the terminal, and enter:
| sudo pico /etc/crontab |
Enter your password. This brings up the crontab file, which is what the cron daemon reads to find out when and what it is supposed to run. The format of the file is as follows:
So, you can also change when the command runs. For example, I changed it so that all mine will run at 22:15, or 10:15 pm. What we need to do is change the command part. There should be three lines with something like periodic followed by daily, weekly, and monthly in the command column. Take out that and put sh /etc/periodic/daily/500.daily | mail root instead for the daily. Do the same for weekly and monthly, but change the daily's to weekly and monthly, respectively.
Now hit control-x to quit, and enter Y to save. Everything should be set now.
Congratulations. You now should get daily system logs in the Local account in Mail. As I said above: If you need any help, send me some email and I'd be glad to help you out.
Revision P- Removed section on Mail and Unix mail, since it no longer applies to 10.2. Also added part about fixing the crontab file. 07/18/03
Revision O- Added instructions on removing NetInfo configuration preference.02/18/03
Revision N- Updated for new imap build and SSL problems.
Revision M- Updated for Mac OS X 10.2
Revision L- Added note about permissions of sendmail, changed a few lines, added a sample cron report, fixed instructions on console, and improved on the formatting of the page.
Revision K- Added note about problems with Mail.app and Unix mail.
Thanks to the following people for their help:
| Robert Mohns | Helped with sendmail and pine, and with Unix in general |
| Darkshadow | Gave directions for bypassing imap and using Mail.app directly |
| Roger Morris | Gave location to have imap point too(mail subdirectory) |
| Dennis Munsie | Pointed out that restart inetd is all that is needed, and that using su instead of multiple su can be used |
| Fredrik Jonsson | Gave info on using Mail directly instead of imap |
| jraser | Pointed out a spelling mistake |
| Kyle R. Green | Pointed out correct directory for imapd, pointed out error in copy, noted that only imap, and not pop is needed |
| Uli Zappe | Gave directions for using Mail.app directly, pointed out some steps involving sendmail that weren't needed |
| Frank Coe | For the tip about Stuffit 5.5 |
| Forrest Walter | For suggesting putting up the cron report, among other corrections |
| Michel Pasquier | For pointing on an error in opening mail.log |
| James Duncan Davidson | For his excellent tutorial on sendmail and OSX at O'rielly's Mac Dev Page |
| Gregory Neil Shapiro | For instructing me on the NetInfo problem. |
| Daniel J. Luke | For finding the NetInfo problem originally. |
Last Updated:07/18/03
Created and Maintained by Matthew Butch- libertyof76@supernet.com