There are two basic steps to installing sendmail(1M). First, you have to compile and install the binary. If sendmail has already been ported to your operating system that should be simple. Second, you must build a run-time configuration file. This is a file that sendmail reads when it starts up that describes the mailers it knows about, how to parse addresses, how to rewrite the message header, and the settings of various options. Although the configuration file can be quite complex, a configuration can usually be built using an using an M4-based configuration language.
The remainder of this topic will describe the installation of sendmail assuming you can use one of the existing configurations and that the standard installation parameters are acceptable. All pathnames and examples are given from the root of the sendmail subtree, normally /usr/src/usr.lib/sendmail on 4.4BSD.
If you are loading this off the tape, continue with ``Compiling sendmail''. If you have a running binary already on your system, you should probably skip to ``Configuration files''.