[Mimedefang] RE: Installing MD on a Solaris 8 box?

[Dirk the Daring]

On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 Fernando Gleiser wrote:

>------------------------------
>From: Fernando Gleiser <fgleiser at cactus.fi.uba.ar>
>
>I need to install MIMEDefang, SpamAssassin and ClamAV on a Solaris 8 box
>
>>From what I've seen, the gcc and perl versions are ancient, perl
>is 5.005 and gcc is 2.95, so it seems I have to upgrade it.
>sendmail is 8.11, I think I have to upgrade it too.
>
>Has anyone done it? are there any gotchas I should be aware of?

   I have installed MIMEDefang (versions 2.5x), SpamAssassin (versions
2.6x thru v3.0x) and ClamAV (versions 0.87.x thru v0.88) on Solaris v8
and v9 (both on SPARC hardware). Yes, it can be done.

   There is no GCC in a stock Solaris v8 environment, or any other C
compiler, for that matter. If the system has one, it was added
post-install. If you need to add one, or upgrade the existing one, I've
found GCC v3.3.2 to work well on Solaris v8. You can download a
pre-compiled GCC in Sun package format from http://www.sunfreeware.com

   The Perl in the stock Solaris v8 is Perl v5.000_03, I think.
v5.00xxx for sure. You do NOT want to:

	1) Try to use it for anything
	2) Remove it

   You'll find that /usr/bin/perl is a link to /usr/perl5/bin/perl. Do
NOT tamper with the contents of /usr/perl5 !!! Some core Solaris
components rely on this version and location of Perl. Mess with it and
you run the risk of choking your entire system.

   However, there's nothing wrong with putting a newer version of Perl
elsewhere on the system and creating links in /usr/bin. The core
components that rely on /usr/perl5 are hardcoded to look there, not in
/usr/bin. So get Perl v5.8.x (I've used v5.8.6 and v5.8.8 with equal
success) and install it (I put mine in /opt/perl and linked as needed to
/usr/bin).

   The sendmail included with Solaris v8, even with the latest
Recommended Patches, is horribly out-of-date. Get rid of it. The
following commands will expunge it:

	# pkgrm SUNWsndmr
	# pkgrm SUNWsndmu

   Then get the latest code (v8.13.5 is latest as of this writing),
build and install it (or get the pre-compiled binaries from the same
place as the pre-compiled gcc). You want to remove Sun's ancient
versions because if you don't, the next time you apply a Recommended
Patches kit that contains a patch for either of those two package names,
your sendmail will get clobbered. I learned this little bit the hard
way.

   Note that there are some pre-requisites you may need to install
before building sendmail - for example, Berkeley DB, or OpenSSL (if you
plan on using SMTP-TLS). I'm mostly a build-from-scratch guy, so I dunno
what the pre-built packages take.

   OK, so now you have a C compiler, a modern Perl version, and a
current sendmail. Be sure to add all the additional Perl modules needed
by MIMEDefang - these are readily available from http://www.cpan.org and
are well-documented in the MD documentation. Sometimes you'll need to
install one before another, as you'll find occasional dependencies.

   Next, build and install ClamAV and SpamAssassin before building and
installing MIMEDefang, or MD won't detect them automatically. Once you
have ClamAV and SA installed, build and install MD.

   Brandon Hutchinson has a great site chock full of Solaris-specific
info, including an number of write-ups for sendmail on Solaris. See
http://www.brandonhutchinson.com