I have a new install of OS 5.07 that's been running for a month. Early this
week, sendmail stopped working, generating error messages as below. What
could be the cause of this?

/usr/lib/sendmail.cf: line 90: fileclass: cannot open
'/usr/lib/mail/local-host-
names': World writable directory
/usr/lib/sendmail.cf: line 108: fileclass: cannot open
'/usr/lib/uucp/Systems':
World writable directory
/usr/lib/sendmail.cf: line 133: fileclass: cannot open
'/usr/lib/mail/domains':
World writable directory

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 10:22:31 -0500, "Ron Kirschner" <ron@jedron.com>
wrote:

>I have a new install of OS 5.07 that's been running for a month. Early this
>week, sendmail stopped working, generating error messages as below. What
>could be the cause of this?
>
>/usr/lib/sendmail.cf: line 90: fileclass: cannot open
>'/usr/lib/mail/local-host-
>names': World writable directory
>/usr/lib/sendmail.cf: line 108: fileclass: cannot open
>'/usr/lib/uucp/Systems':
>World writable directory
>/usr/lib/sendmail.cf: line 133: fileclass: cannot open
>'/usr/lib/mail/domains':
>World writable directory
>

Sendmail is extremely (in fact ridiculously) paranoid about directory
permission settings. It's possible that someone has manually altered
the permissions on your /usr or /usr/lib directory. The error is
usually not even accurate as a directory may not be "world writable"
but sendmail will still complain unless it's chmodded to 700.

Personally I usually compile/configure sendmail so that it stores all
of its files in a its own tree from the / directory with everything
owned by the sendmail user alone. This includes pid files and milter
sockets (if in use).