How To Install sendmail on CentOS 8

sendmail is A widely used Mail Transport Agent (MTA)

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install sendmail on CentOS 8.

What is sendmail

The Sendmail program is a very widely used Mail Transport Agent (MTA). MTAs send mail from one machine to another. Sendmail is not a client program, which you use to read your email. Sendmail is a behind-the-scenes program which actually moves your email over networks or the Internet to where you want it to go. If you ever need to reconfigure Sendmail, you will also need to have the sendmail-cf package installed. If you need documentation on Sendmail, you can install the sendmail-doc package.

We can use yum or dnf to install sendmail on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install sendmail.

Install sendmail on CentOS 8 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install sendmail using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install sendmail

Install sendmail on CentOS 8 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install sendmail using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install sendmail

How To Uninstall sendmail on CentOS 8

To uninstall only the sendmail package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove sendmail

sendmail Package Contents on CentOS 8

/etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/10-sendmail
/etc/mail
/etc/mail/Makefile
/etc/mail/access
/etc/mail/access.db
/etc/mail/aliasesdb-stamp
/etc/mail/domaintable
/etc/mail/domaintable.db
/etc/mail/helpfile
/etc/mail/local-host-names
/etc/mail/mailertable
/etc/mail/mailertable.db
/etc/mail/make
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf
/etc/mail/sendmail.mc
/etc/mail/submit.cf
/etc/mail/submit.mc
/etc/mail/trusted-users
/etc/mail/virtusertable
/etc/mail/virtusertable.db
/etc/pam.d/smtp
/etc/pam.d/smtp.sendmail
/etc/sasl2/Sendmail.conf
/etc/smrsh
/etc/sysconfig/sendmail
/usr/bin/hoststat
/usr/bin/mailq
/usr/bin/mailq.sendmail
/usr/bin/makemap
/usr/bin/newaliases
/usr/bin/newaliases.sendmail
/usr/bin/purgestat
/usr/bin/rmail
/usr/bin/rmail.sendmail
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/06
/usr/lib/.build-id/06/2a2cc8b68afec4edf1277853ead102f3a16f0b
/usr/lib/.build-id/24
/usr/lib/.build-id/24/0eae6c09cb6567ee902d985b543367913d568e
/usr/lib/.build-id/2a
/usr/lib/.build-id/2a/c6debaa27f2a52a20257703dfa76e3ebff857b
/usr/lib/.build-id/aa
/usr/lib/.build-id/aa/2916020736fab237ea58a496c04eb61dc016dd
/usr/lib/.build-id/c2
/usr/lib/.build-id/c2/bc0bd7e97d9ee556ec810d58bff13a8e2132d4
/usr/lib/.build-id/d3
/usr/lib/.build-id/d3/2702e00311da87fcc531065ea4eb9c7f7e5074
/usr/lib/.build-id/d4
/usr/lib/.build-id/d4/13fe3c359a5df34808d4bdad8bfd9c268b481c
/usr/lib/sendmail
/usr/lib/sendmail.sendmail
/usr/lib/systemd/system/sendmail.service
/usr/lib/systemd/system/sm-client.service
/usr/sbin/editmap
/usr/sbin/editmap.sendmail
/usr/sbin/mailstats
/usr/sbin/makemap
/usr/sbin/makemap.sendmail
/usr/sbin/praliases
/usr/sbin/sendmail
/usr/sbin/sendmail.sendmail
/usr/sbin/smrsh
/usr/share/doc/sendmail
/usr/share/doc/sendmail/FAQ
/usr/share/doc/sendmail/KNOWNBUGS
/usr/share/doc/sendmail/LICENSE
/usr/share/doc/sendmail/README
/usr/share/doc/sendmail/RELEASE_NOTES.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/mailq.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/mailq.sendmail.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/newaliases.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/newaliases.sendmail.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/aliases.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/aliases.sendmail.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/editmap.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/editmap.sendmail.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/hoststat.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/mailstats.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/makemap.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/makemap.sendmail.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/praliases.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/purgestat.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/rmail.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/rmail.sendmail.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/sendmail.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/sendmail.sendmail.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/smrsh.8.gz
/var/log/mail
/var/log/mail/statistics
/var/spool/clientmqueue
/var/spool/clientmqueue/sm-client.st
/var/spool/mqueue

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install sendmail on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.