hello. Following up on my own question yet again, I think I found the trouble and I don't think it's NetBSD-5 specific.
pkgsrc/mail/sendmail/files/site.config.m4-sasl2 has the following change: Index: site.config.m4-sasl2 =================================================================== RCS file: /cvsroot/pkgsrc/mail/sendmail/files/site.config.m4-sasl2,v retrieving revision 1.2 retrieving revision 1.3 diff -u -r1.2 -r1.3 --- site.config.m4-sasl2 30 Aug 2004 20:16:28 -0000 1.2 +++ site.config.m4-sasl2 20 Jun 2014 16:26:55 -0000 1.3 @@ -1,5 +1,8 @@ -# $NetBSD: site.config.m4-sasl2,v 1.2 2004/08/30 20:16:28 adrianp Exp $ +# $NetBSD: site.config.m4-sasl2,v 1.3 2014/06/20 16:26:55 jnemeth Exp $ # enable SASL 2 APPENDDEF(`confENVDEF', `-DSASL=2') APPENDDEF(`conf_sendmail_LIBS', `-lsasl2') + +# for some strange reason SASL, and NAMED_RESN and MILTER are incompatible +APPENDDEF(`confENVDEF', `-DNAMED_RESN=0') The cvs log says this: revision 1.3 date: 2014-06-20 16:26:55 +0000; author: jnemeth; state: Exp; lines: +4 -1; commitid: z2V9mO8kpncGohFx; Update to sendmail 8.14.9nb2: this is a pkgsrc bugfix update. This should be the last update during the freeze. PR/48566 - Emmanuel Dreyfus -- typo in patch-aw leading to build failure PR/48913 - Matthias Scheler -- libmilter fails on unprivileged builds ---------------------------- By switching NAMED_RESN to 1, sendmail builds and uses the proper version of the resolver routines such that they work with the libpthread library linked in. Preliminary testing suggests this is a building problem, rather than a run time problem, as all the milters we have configured seem to be working fine with the resultant binaries. So, my question is, is this change in place solely to accomodate the fact that we do unprivileged builds on the bulk builders? If so, might it be useful to put a note in the Makefile or a README file in the package directory explaining this issue and the work around that's available? The work around seems to be to perform privileged builds, which work fine. If you want to use sendmail with the latest version of the openssl libraries, which was what I was trying to do, you absolutely need to use libpthread, so you need to build with NAMED_RESN set to 1. Let me be clear, I'm not objecting to the change, but I think it should be more clearly documented so that folks building this package can avoid the tail chasing I've engaged in for the past few days. Any suggestion on the best way to provide that documentation? -thanks -Brian