I posted this to the c.m.sendmail group, but so far have had no responses,
so I am trying here. Hopefully someone can shed some light on this. I've
googled about, and basically I got a whole bunch of computer voodoo type
stuff, but nothing has helped. I suspect the Debian sendmail installation
process is really hosed.

I've been running a self-compiled version of sendmail quite happily for a
while. Unfortunately, that server died, so I decided to build a new
server, based on Debian Testing.

Rather than build sendmail again, I am using the sendmail version from the
testing repository.

I've taken my old .mc file, and rebuilt sendmail.cf on the new system,
which I've done before with no problems.

Now, however I get errors on every message:

Dec 3 21:45:43 dionysus sm-mta[5722]: kB45jgaN005722: SYSERR(root): hash map "Alias0": unsafe map file /etc/mail/aliases.db: Permission denied
Dec 3 21:45:43 dionysus sm-mta[5722]: kB45jgaN005722: SYSERR(root): collect: Cannot write ./dfkB45jgaN005722 (bfcommit, uid=0, gid=110): Permission denied

OK, fine, so somewhere I have a permissions problem. But I've been all
through the configuration and the spool files, and I have no idea where to
look anymore. Is anyone familiar with debian's sendmail and user stuff to
give me some advice?

The old server:

Version 8.13.2
Compiled with: DNSMAP LOG MATCHGECOS MILTER MIME7TO8 MIME8TO7
NAMED_BIND NETINET NETUNIX NEWDB PIPELINING SASLv2 SCANF USERDB
XDEBUG

============ SYSTEM IDENTITY (after readcf) ============
(short domain name) $w = tooth
(canonical domain name) $j = tooth.seiner.lan
(subdomain name) $m = seiner.lan
(node name) $k = tooth.seiner.lan
================================================== ======

The new server:

dionysus:/etc/init.d# sendmail -d0.1
Version 8.13.8
Compiled with: DNSMAP LDAPMAP LDAP_REFERRALS LOG MAP_REGEX MATCHGECOS
MILTER MIME7TO8 MIME8TO7 NAMED_BIND NETINET NETINET6 NETUNIX
NEWDB NIS NISPLUS PIPELINING SASLv2 SCANF SOCKETMAP STARTTLS
USERDB USE_LDAP_INIT XDEBUG

============ SYSTEM IDENTITY (after readcf) ============
(short domain name) $w = dionysus
(canonical domain name) $j = dionysus.seiner.lan
(subdomain name) $m = seiner.lan
(node name) $k = dionysus
================================================== ======