Very Computer

Hello,

I have a problem with my linux box sending and receiving mail.

Our mail server is Red Hat 5.0 Kernel 2.032 with the PC's running
Netscape 4.5. When I send mail from one desktop to another the sendmail
daemon never actually puts the message in the recipients mailbox.  The
syslog says that it IS doing this. There was no configuration changes
made anywhere.

Does anyone have any suggestions on this problem?

Thanks, Dan

Most likely sendmail keeps the messages in its queue

Use mailq (or sendmail -bp) to see the reason why.

--
Andrzej (Andrew) A. Filip

Postings: http://www.deja.com/profile.xp?author=Andrzej%20Filip&ST=PS
fax2email: +1(801)327-6278

Thanks for your response, Andrzej.

You are correct, the sendmail daemon has them in it's own queue.  here is a
sample line from "sendmail -bp":

                 (host map: lookup (currentdirections.com): deferred)

Why is this deferred?

Thanks, Dan

Most likely because it's set up that way.  It may have been told to
queue mail on startup or via it's configuration (Something like
HoldExpensive being set with "E" set on the local mailer flags - it
shouldn't really be like that though.).  Either that or there could be a
problem with DNS lookups.
--
Mist.

As far as I can remember this is more do to with DNS lookups of MX
records.
Take a look in syslog, and also run sendmail -v so it can show you what
it is doing.

eg.

Sendmail is probably configured to use DNS and you may to rewrite the mc
file use hosts only if you do not use a DNS. If you do you DNS make sure
the MX records are set up correctly. ie use nslookup.

set the type=MX to only show Mail Exhanger records.

If you are not using DNS or you do not have a direct connection to the
net, you will probably want to use a SMARTHOST. ie a mail gateway within
your firewall that does have access to the outside world. You simply
forward all mail that is outside of your domain to that host.

Hope that helps.

Here's an example from my machine, I've commented out some of the names
and ip addresses...

Default Server:  nameserver.XXXX.com
Address:  X.X.X.X

Quote:> set type=MX
> currentdirections.com

Server:  nameserver.XXXX.com
Address:  X.X.X.X

Non-authoritative answer:
currentdirections.com   preference = 10, mail exchanger =
mail.currentdirections.com

currentdirections.com   preference = 20, mail exchanger =
mail.buckeyeweb.com

Authoritative answers can be found from:
currentdirections.com   nameserver = HAL9002.buckeyeweb.com
currentdirections.com   nameserver = HAL9003.buckeyeweb.com
mail.currentdirections.com      internet address = 207.122.180.21
HAL9002.buckeyeweb.com  internet address = 207.122.180.200
HAL9003.buckeyeweb.com  internet address = 207.122.180.250

Test Message about sendmail failure.

mail.currentdirections.com. via esmtp...