sendmail, 4th Edition

The Sleepycat DB Library

The Sleepycat DB library was previously called the new BSD db library. Some versions of Unix come with this library preinstalled. If your version does not, or if you already have the db library installed but it is not version 2.0 or higher, you should upgrade now. If you lack db support, you should consider installing it now.

The Sleepycat DB library supports btree, extended linear hashing, and fixed and variable-length records. It also includes transactional support, database recovery, online backups, and separate access to locking, logging, and shared memory caching subsystems. In short, this is an extremely valuable library to possess, and it greatly improves the sendmail program’s handling of aliases and map files.

This library is so key to sendmail that Build automatically includes support for it if it finds a libdb.a or libdb.so library in its search paths. All you have to do is download, compile, and install that library.

The db(3) source is available from http://www.oracle.com/database/berkeley-db/. But note that Sleepycat DB V4.1.0 through V4.1.24 does not work with V8.12.6 and earlier versions of sendmail. For later sendmail versions, see the file RELEASE_NOTES.

The sendmail/README file contains important information, and you should read that file before installing the db library.