This is the procedure for how to fix “X-Authentication-Warning” and “owned process doing -bs” in email headers by configuring trusted users of local submission to Sendmail. Tested with Sendmail 8.18 on FreeBSD 13.5 and 14.3. Published 2025-10-29.
What causes “X-Authentication-Warning” and “owned process doing -bs”?
If a local system user sends email by local submission to Sendmail, but is not trusted by Sendmail, then Sendmail will add “X-Authentication-Warning” and “owned process doing -bs” to the email headers. There are other variants of “X-Authentication-Warning”. See the following examples.
X-Authentication-Warning: wopr.micski.dk: lightman owned process doing -bs
X-Authentication-Warning: wopr.micski.dk: www set sender to using -f
The first reason is, that to Sendmail, the user did not pass a Sendmail authentication, because the user was already logged in. The second reason is, that the user was not registered as a trusted user of Sendmail. This can be a problem for receiving mail servers, when running spam filters and similar validation processes.
Configure local submission for Sendmail.
Locate the current macro configuration (MC) files for Sendmail. The default for FreeBSD is a generic configuration, that is named freebsd, and a site specific configuration, that is named after the hostname. Only the site specific is used.
# cd /etc/mail
# ls *.mc
freebsd.mc wopr.micski.dk.mc
freebsd.submit.mc wopr.micski.dk.submit.mc
Each configuration has a file for Sendmails mail transfer agent (MTA) role, that is named after hostname, and a file for Sendmails mail submission program (MSP) role, that is named after hostname and submission.
The MTA role includes the handling of email, that is sent to or received from external mail servers. The MSP role includes the handling of email, that is sent from Alpine, CRON, MAIL, Mutt or PHP on the local server.
Disable the authentication warning. Register the trusted users of MSP. If your MTA also apply DKIM, then you might want to apply it for local submission as well.
# nano `hostname`.submit.mc
define(`confAUTH_WARNING', `False')
define(`confTRUSTED_USERS', `lightman www')
INPUT_MAIL_FILTER(`opendkim', `S=inet:8891@localhost, F=T, T=R:2m')
Compile configuration and restart Sendmail.
Compile the new MC files into the operational configuration file (CF) format. Install the new configuration. Restart Sendmail.
# make
/usr/bin/m4 -D_CF_DIR_=/usr/share/sendmail/cf/ /usr/share/sendmail/cf/m4/cf.m4 wopr.micski.dk.submit.mc > wopr.micski.dk.submit.cf
# make install
install -m 444 wopr.micski.dk.cf /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
install -m 444 wopr.micski.dk.submit.cf /etc/mail/submit.cf
# service sendmail restart
Test the new mail headers.
Test the new mail headers by submitting an email to an external email address, that allows you to extract the mail headers. I recommend using a test tool, such as Mail Tester, because it also gives you a complete report, based on your mail headers.