Due to a sequence of events (mailer motherboard let out magic smoke and
none of my scsi I/o cards are modern enough), I'm forced to build a new
sendmail installation from scratch.

In attempting to check config(it is not working), I'm trying to diagnose
problems, I'm using checksendmail and getting the following error;

> sudo checksendmail
Type of arg 1 to shift must be array (not constant item) at /usr/sbin/
checksendmail line 40, near "ARGV) "
Execution of /usr/sbin/checksendmail aborted due to compilation errors.

Does anyone have any ideas for a fix?
It is a new/latest(?) installation via Debian buster.

L.S.; this mailer has been working since I first swapped from SMTP t
Sendmail on a Redhat very early system and is like the old axe in that it
has survived various OS version upgrades and distro changes and the NBK
<vbg> has completely forgotten all he did to set it up.

So far it is passing logcheck messages and nothing else.

News 2021 wrote:

> In attempting to check config(it is not working), I'm trying to diagnose

Do you have a better problem description than "it is not working"?

> > sudo checksendmail
> Type of arg 1 to shift must be array (not constant item) at /usr/sbin/

> Does anyone have any ideas for a fix?

Ask Debian? That script is not supplied by sendmail.

But why do you want to fix some script instead of your sendmail
installation?

What happens when you try to send mail
$ date | sendmail -v $USER
# date | sendmail -Am -v $USER
# date | sendmail -Am -v $USER@REMOTE.HOST
etc.
Check the output of the commands and the logfile.

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article(s) at the end because it's annoying, shows that the poster
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On Sun, 25 Apr 2021 06:45:33 +0000, Claus Aßmann scribed:

> News 2021 wrote:
>
>> In attempting to check config(it is not working), I'm trying to
>> diagnose
>
> Do you have a better problem description than "it is not working"?
>
>> > sudo checksendmail
>> Type of arg 1 to shift must be array (not constant item) at /usr/sbin/
>
>> Does anyone have any ideas for a fix?
>
> Ask Debian? That script is not supplied by sendmail.

Thanks
>
> But why do you want to fix some script instead of your sendmail
> installation?
>
> What happens when you try to send mail $ date | sendmail -v $USER # date
> | sendmail -Am -v $USER # date | sendmail -Am -v $USER@REMOTE.HOST etc.
> Check the output of the commands and the logfile.

At the time I had non-working new installation and was looking for hints
to fit it.

It turned out to be a faulty sendmail.mc, so I went back to the supplied
sendmail.mc and did the routine of testing after each change and a bit
more reading on the few few good sendmail fault posts on the internet
and eventually have a working sendmail.

Is it just me and a useless search engine(duckduckgo), but there seems to
be very few useful information posts on sendmail these days.

Caveat, I've hardly had to fiddle with the mailer systemm over the last
~20 years. It has just worked well through OS/distro upgrades ad distro
changes.

On 4/25/21 3:06 AM, News 2021 wrote:
> Is it just me and a useless search engine(duckduckgo), but there
> seems to be very few useful information posts on sendmail these days.

Sendmail has definitely fallen out of vogue. I think that the
anti-Sendmail sentiment has also largely fallen out of vogue too.
Meaning that most of the industry has moved on to other things.

Such is the nature of things that run for years at a time tirelessly
doing something that many people find to be boring or think is too
difficult and beyond their capability.

> Caveat, I've hardly had to fiddle with the mailer systemm over the
> last ~20 years. It has just worked well through OS/distro upgrades
> ad distro changes.

I almost said "just worked" in the previous statement. However Sendmail
can be quite persnickety about things and does require some effort to
work as desired. But once configured, it just runs.

--
Grant. . . .
unix || die

Claus Aßmann <ml+sendmail(-no-copies-please)@esmtp.org> wrote:
> News 2021 wrote:
>
>> In attempting to check config(it is not working), I'm trying to diagnose
>
> Do you have a better problem description than "it is not working"?
>
>> > sudo checksendmail
>> Type of arg 1 to shift must be array (not constant item) at /usr/sbin/
>
>> Does anyone have any ideas for a fix?
>
> Ask Debian? That script is not supplied by sendmail.
> […]

It may be reported to debian as bug in sendmail-base package.
Debian bug reports may be reported using reportbug program provided by
reportbug package.

AFAIK Debian sendmail-bug package is orphaned (no maintainer).

--
[Andrew] Andrzej A. Filip