Situation: sendmail RPM removed. Another mail server is installed which provides a sendmail-compatible command line mail submitter. /usr/sbin/sendmail, and others, are soft links that point to this sendmail command line emulator. The other mail server's RPM also includes a "provides" of "smtpdaemon". When exiting linuxconf, linuxconf wants to do a bunch of things it really shouldn't. linuxconf tells me that it wants to create /var/spool/mqueue, because it's not there anymore. Well, I wouldn't really mind that, it doesn't matter, except that linuxconf wants to do something else that's a bit more disturbing. Apparently, linuxconf reads the /usr/sbin/sendmail (or /usr/lib/sendmail) soft link, and it wants to change the *underlying* executable's ownership and permissions to what sendmail's permissions should be. That's what linuxconf tells me that it wants to do, before it exits. The other mail server's sendmail emulator is installed nowhere close to where sendmail normally lives, and my mail server is not a monolithic root setuid beast, and changing my mail server's command line injector to run setuid root is a disaster that's waiting to happen. There's no good reason for linuxconf to do this. sendmail is not installed, there is no sendmail RPM, and there isn't anything calling itself "sendmail" that's installed where sendmail normally lives.
This is fixed in Raw Hide; Linuxconf will no longer inspect or verify the permissions on /usr/sbin/sendmail.