As I mentioned yesterday, I'm having a bit of trouble with my server upgrade. I've tinkered a little bit more, and now have some additional insight.

First and foremost, I don't know what in the installation wonked up the boot so that the latest and greatest won't allow the server to boot. Sits at the boot prompt. I'm able to boot the 2.6.27-11 kernel, but not the 2.6.31-22 version.

That's also the root to why I cannot get my sendmail to rebuild; it's trying to find the headers for 2.6.27-11, but they've been removed by the updater.

I've also toyed a bit with the Postfix configurations. Honestly, it's no less muddled and confusing than a sendmail configuration. It's all about your comfort zone and knowing all of the key phrases that go in the key places in the key files. I've been using sendmail for far too long; it's both pretty easy for me to use, and frankly I like it.

I want the mail server to do a few simple things:

• Accept any mail TO a domain on the server, unless rejected by other configuration including RBL, alias, and time-out
• Accept any mail FROM authorized users, no matter who they say its from or to, no matter what
• Work with the virtual address list to forward mail that seems like it belongs on this server to the mailbox really intended to receive it

Is that so hard?

Frustrated, I went rogue and started really compromising the system. I removed Postfix entirely. I made a symlink for the gcc version that the sendmail build seemed to be trying to use (even though it isn't the one installed), and the build succeeded... A couple configuration file copies and rebuilds, and viola! Sendmail returns. Good old configuration. Good old performance and control.

Now, if I can only get the latest kernel to boot (and then, probably, to re-rebuild sendmail...).