PH Query Service Retirement

• Frequently Asked Questions
• Background
• Information to help you reconfigure your systems
• Additional Help

Is PH Being Retired?

No. This document refers only to the PH Query service, which sounds similar to PH, but applies only to sendmail servers with a specific custom configuration. If you have never edited a sendmail configuration file, this document does not apply to you.

Is the Email Redirection Service Being Retired?

No. The Email Redirection service will continue to function.

The original intent of the PH query service was to perform netid@uiuc.edu address lookups on behalf of the UIUC campus email relays. The service was expanded to allow other UIUC system administrators to take advantage of the PH query service in order to perform local address lookups and help reduce load on the campus email relays.

Several months ago, the campus email relays were re-architected to utilize local address lookup tables, increasing the efficiency and speed of the lookups as well as removing the dependency on the PH query service. The capacity of the email relay infrastructure has been increased dramatically so that the load imposed by performing address lookups for other campus email servers is no longer a concern.

Additionally, retiring the PH query service will aid the rollout of the Central Email Anti-Spam Solution (see the Preventing Spam from Reaching You page for more information on the Central Email Anti-Spam Solution).

The current plans for the Central Email Anti-Spam Solution include screening of all email sent to netid@uiuc.edu. However, email sent to netid@uiuc.edu addresses from SMTP servers utilizing the PH query service will not be screened, as email will be delivered directly to the recipient's email server rather than through the Central Email Anti-Spam Solution.

We therefore highly recommend that email servers using the PH query service be reconfigured before the service is retired.

• List of systems using the PH query service from November 8-15, 2004

  Note: An updated list will be generated one month prior to the retirement date.

• If you would like to determine whether your system is configured to use the PH query service, instructions for checking your system can be found later in this document.

• If you are running Solaris 8, Solaris 9, AIX 4.3.3, or AIX 5.1 and have made no special sendmail customizations, you may be able to use one of our sendmail Encap packages to update your system.

• If you are running a customized sendmail configuration and wish to remove PH query functionality, general instructions for editing your *.mc file and generating a new sendmail.cf file can be found later in this page.

The PH query service is added to sendmail servers using the sendmail configuration file. Sendmail's configuration file is typically found in /etc/mail/sendmail.cf. You can determine whether sendmail is configured to use the PH query service by running this command:

grep phquery /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

Sendmail is configured to use PH query if the result of the command is similar to this:

K domain_uiuc_edu ph -D -l 30 -h phquery.uiuc.edu -T<TEMP>

If you are running Solaris 8, Solaris 9, AIX 4.3.3, or AIX 5.1 and are already using an older version of the sendmail Encap package, you may be able to remove PH query functionality by using a newer version of the sendmail Encap package. Please note that you must not use this procedure if you have customized your sendmail configuration, or your customizations will be lost!

Versions of the sendmail Encap package that do not contain the PH query functionality can be found by searching for "sendmail" at the CITES Encap Package Search page.

The current Encap version of sendmail is sendmail-8.12.11+3.

1. Download the sendmail Encap package appropriate to your system's operating system into the /usr/local/encap subdirectory.
2. Change to the /usr/local/encap directory.
3. Stop the sendmail daemon as appropriate for your operating system.
4. Install the new Encap package by running the following command:

   /usr/local/bin/epkg <name of Encap package>

   For example:

   /usr/local/bin/epkg sendmail-8.12.11+3-encap-sparc-solaris9.tar.gz

5. Change to the /etc/mail subdirectory.
6. Make a backup copy of your sendmail.cf file:

   cp sendmail.cf sendmail.cf.original

7. Copy uiuc-standalone.cf to sendmail.cf:

   cp uiuc-standalone.cf sendmail.cf

8. Start the sendmail daemon as appropriate for your operating system.
9. Confirm that the sendmail daemon is running:

   ps -ef | grep sendmail

   You should see at least two sendmail processes running.

If you are running a customized version of sendmail and/or cannot install a new sendmail Encap package, you may have to regenerate your sendmail configuration file by yourself. Since system configurations vary greatly, these instructions are fairly general. However, we hope that there is enough information here to help you reconfigure sendmail.

1. Identify which *.mc file was used to generate your sendmail.cf file.

   The file could be /etc/mail/sendmail.mc. You may also be able to find the file's name by searching through the comments in your /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file.

2. Edit your *.mc file to remove the line that specifies the PH query service.

   Find the line that looks like this:

   FEATURE(`domainmap', `uiuc.edu', `ph -D -l 30 -h phquery.uiuc.edu')dnl

   Comment out the line by putting the string dnl in front of it, like this:

   dnl FEATURE(`domainmap', `uiuc.edu', `ph -D -l 30 -h phquery.uiuc.edu')dnl

3. Use m4 to create a Sendmail configuration file (sendmail.cf) from the *.mc file.

   Because m4 varies so much between platforms and versions, specific instructions are impossible. However, sendmail.cf generation would be performed as follows in recent sendmail Encap packages. This assumes that the *.mc file is /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and that the resulting configuration file will be named /etc/mail/sendmail.cf. Your system may be configured differently.

   1. Make a backup copy of /etc/mail/sendmail.cf:

      cp /etc/mail/sendmail.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf.original

   2. Process the *.mc file using m4:

      /usr/local/bin/m4 /usr/local/share/sendmail/m4/cf.m4 \
      /etc/mail/sendmail.mc \
      > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

   3. Restart the sendmail daemon as appropriate for your operating system.
   4. Confirm that the sendmail daemon is running:

      ps -ef | grep sendmail

      You should see at least two sendmail processes running.

CITES will be happy to work with departmental IT support professionals to assist in removing the PH query functionality from affected email servers at no cost to the deparmtent or unit. Please contact the CITES Workstation Services Group (part of the Systems Management Group) at cites-wsg@uiuc.edu if you are interested.