[plug] sendmail config oddities

[Ryan]

Can someone else using sendmail perhaps explain this to me:

/usr/share/sendmail/sendmail is the all encompassing mega-script that
even replaces the init.d script on most systems, and right up the top it
has stuff like this:

Get_Parameters () {

	# Main configuration parameters in /etc/mail/sendmail.conf
	DAEMON_MODE='Daemon';
	DAEMON_PARMS='';
	QUEUE_MODE="$DAEMON_MODE";
	QUEUE_INTERVAL='10';
	QUEUE_PARMS='';
	MSP_MODE="$QUEUE_MODE";
	MSP_INTERVAL="$QUEUE_INTERVAL";
	MSP_PARMS="$QUEUE_PARMS";
	MISC_PARMS='';
	CRON_PARMS='';

	....

Notice the *_PARMS ones have nothing assigned?  Thus anything defined to
them in /etc/mail/sendmail.conf is ignored until you edit them and make
it read for example:

DAEMON_PARMS="$DAEMON_PARMS";

I was just setting up mailscanner/sendmail on a new box and had this
problem of it ignoring PARMS lines in the sendmail.conf file - it was
sendmail 8.12.6-7 on Debian.  Version 8.12.3-6.3 on Debian has the same
config file with the blank assignments, yet somehow it doesn't ignore
the sendmail.conf PARAMS lines and it all works as you'd exepect.

Yes I realise that the DAEMON_PARMS can also be directly quoted on the
command line when invoking sendmail, but the sendmail.conf file is there
for a reason one would presume? :)

All fixed now, but a little odd, can anyone think why they leave them
blank?  Are they meant to be obtained elsewhere?  The file is hardcoding
defaults and ignoring a lot of valid config optoins.  Is this style of
config Debian specific? - granted it says this at the top:

#       Debian helper function script for Debian Sendmail
#         Note: this file supports 8.7.6 - 8.12.7

:)

Thanks,

Ryan