Issued:
2011-08-08
Updated:
2011-08-08

RHBA-2011:1127 - sendmail bug fix update

Synopsis

sendmail bug fix update

Type/Severity

Bug Fix Advisory

Topic

Updated sendmail packages that resolve an issue are now available for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.

Description

Sendmail is a widely used Mail Transport Agent (MTA). MTAs deliver mail from one machine to another. Sendmail is not a client program, but rather a behind-the-scenes daemon that moves email over networks or the Internet to its final destination.

These updated sendmail packages fix the following bug:

  • Sendmail previously used the MAXHOSTNAMELEN macro to allocate buffers containing host names and Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDNs). The value of the MAXHOSTNAMELEN macro is set to 64 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems, which means that such allocated buffer can hold at most 63 characters, but according to the RFC1035, the FQDN maximal length is defined to 255 characters. This caused problems with a FQDN resolution in case that FQDN was longer then 63 characters. With this update, the code has been modified so that the size of buffers containing FQDN is now set to 256 bytes. The issues with the FQDN resolution now no longer occurs. (BZ#726094)

All users of sendmail are advised to upgrade to these updated packages, which resolve this issue.

Solution

Before applying this update, make sure all previously-released errata relevant to your system have been applied.

This update is available via the Red Hat Network. Details on how to use the Red Hat Network to apply this update are available at This content is not included.https://access.redhat.com/kb/docs/DOC-11259

Affected Products

ProductVersionArch
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Power, big endian5ppc
Red Hat Enterprise Linux for IBM z Systems5s390x
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5ia64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server from RHUI5i386
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5x86_64
Red Hat Enterprise Linux Desktop5i386

Updated Packages

  • sendmail-doc-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.s390x.rpm
  • sendmail-doc-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.x86_64.rpm
  • sendmail-devel-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.s390x.rpm
  • sendmail-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.src.rpm
  • sendmail-devel-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.ia64.rpm
  • sendmail-cf-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.x86_64.rpm
  • sendmail-cf-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.ppc.rpm
  • sendmail-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.ia64.rpm
  • sendmail-doc-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.i386.rpm
  • sendmail-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.ppc.rpm
  • sendmail-cf-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.s390x.rpm
  • sendmail-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.i386.rpm
  • sendmail-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.s390x.rpm
  • sendmail-devel-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.x86_64.rpm
  • sendmail-cf-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.ia64.rpm
  • sendmail-devel-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.ppc.rpm
  • sendmail-devel-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.i386.rpm
  • sendmail-doc-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.ppc.rpm
  • sendmail-doc-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.ia64.rpm
  • sendmail-devel-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.ppc64.rpm
  • sendmail-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.x86_64.rpm
  • sendmail-cf-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.i386.rpm
  • sendmail-devel-8.13.8-8.1.el5_7.s390.rpm

Fixes

CVEs

(none)

References

(none)

Additional information