asked on

Configuring sendmail?

Hi all,

I am trying to configure sendmail on Rehat 7.3. The scenario is as such.

We have monitoring software that sends out smtp messages, (presently configured to mail accounts at the localhost server). However, I would like to send these via the central mailhost (nt server), to the main company email system (various accounts).

I have configured kmail within CDE without any issue, and can happily send mail to the company mail accounts (via this application). However, I am unable to send messages from the command line using sendmail or mail. I get a message of:

# Name server timeout
... Transient parse error -- message queued for future de
livery
# Name server timeout

The mailhost is named in /etc/hosts and the monitoring server is not using FQDN (just ip address).

Anyone any ideas / suggestions?

Thanks

Andy

jlevie

Are you using a fully qualified domain name in the address or just the domain portion. In the later case sendmail will need to consult the DNS to obtain the MX record for the domain, which in turn defines the host name.

If you've been using a domain address, try sending the message to the fully qualified address, like user@nt-srv.my-dom.tld.

watsonaw

ASKER

Yes... I've been using a Fully Qualified address from the command line.... ie:

/usr/sbin/sendmail -v -f root@localhost user@my-company.com

subject .....
.....

The server I'm trying to send from is not known via by DNS, and shouldn't have any name server running. The mailhost I'm sending to is recognised as my-company.com

Thanks

Andy

watsonaw

ASKER

jlevie

No that's not a fully qualified address and that's the problem. A fully qualified address would look something like user@nt-server.my-company.com. That means that your hosts file might look something like:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
10.0.0.100 this-redhat.my-company.com this-redhat
10.0.0.1 nt-server.my-company.com nt-server

Because the target address only contains a domain, sendmail thinks that it should look up the MX for that domain to obtain the host name of the mail server.

watsonaw

ASKER

Sorry, please excuse my level of proficiency on this. It seems to be lacking somewhat!

Are you saying that the root@localhost or user@my_company.com is not a FQA?

This is a snip from /etc/hosts file on the redhat_server

127.0.0.1 localhost
129.3.20.19 redhat_server .
10.39.46.11 mailhost my_company.com

The redhat_server is not using DNS so can only be known as either localhost or redhat_server....??

jlevie

It doesn't matter if the RedHat box is using DNS or not. Mail transport operates on the basis of the Domain Name System and always obeys the rules associated with that.

Strictly speaking, your hosts file should look like:

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
129.3.20.19 ppp.cs.oswego.edu ppp
10.39.46.11 mailhost.my_company.com mailhost

you'll note that I did a reverse lookup of the IP of your Redhat box and found out what its real host name is from the DNS. That of course assumes that the IP of the Linux system is really that shown above.

A domain name, in the strictest sense, is two tokens separated by a single '.' and the last token is one of the official top level domains (com, net, edu, mil, etc.). A Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) is at least three tokens separated by a '.'. The looser interpretation, which is what sendmail is operating on is that if the address only contains a single '.' it is a domain and if it contains two or more '.'s it may be a hostname.

watsonaw

ASKER

Ok,

I've changed my hosts file so it now reads,

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
129.3.20.19 redhat_server.mycompany.com redhat_server
10.39.46.11 mailhost.mycompany.com mailhost

and I'm still getting the following error when I try to use sendmail.

/usr/sbin/sendmail -v -f root@redhat_server.mycompany.com user@mycompany.com
mycompany.com: Name server timeout
user@mycompany.com... Transient parse error -- message queued for future delivery

Any further thoughts?! Thanks

Andy

PS: The 129.3.20.19 address is the correct linux address, but it is behind the corporate firewall and as such we're nothing to do with oswego.edu

jlevie

You mail command must be:

sendmail -v -f root@redhat_server.mycompany.com user@mailhost.mycompany.com

It's the destination address that matter w/respect to DNS.

watsonaw

ASKER

OK, I've tried the above and it didn't produce an error. (I guess that's progress) However, the mail hasn't arrived to my inbox (ie: delivered to user@mailhost.my.company.com).

Do I have to make changes to the /etc/sendmail.cf file. On other systems after sending the message I get lot's of acceptance messages appearing on screen from SMTP, ie:

220 SMTP Server
>>> EHLO brom01.my-company.com
250-mycompany.com
250-SIZE 0
250-ETRN
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-DSN
250-VRFY
250-AUTH
250 8BITMIME
>>> MAIL From:<user@brom01.mycompany.com> SIZE=22
250 2.0.0 user@brom01.mycompany.com OK
>>> RCPT To:<user2@mycompany.com>
250 2.0.0 user2@mycompany.com OK
>>> DATA
354 Ready for data
>>> .
250 2.0.0 Message received OK
user2@mycompany.com... Sent (2.0.0 Message received OK)
Closing connection to mailhost.mycompany.com
>>> QUIT
221 2.0.0 mycompany.com closing
$

However, there are no messages on the linux server.

jlevie

Okay, I think that we've solved that part of the problem. Now it is an Exchange problem. What is needed on the Exchange side is that each user that the Linux box will send mail to must have their mailbox configured to listen for mail addressed to the FQDN in addition to mail addressed to the domain.

watsonaw

ASKER

Ok, that sounds good. However, again... I'm not familiar with exchange. Can you explain in lehman's terms.... sorry.

Also, why would Kmail work from within CDE and sendmail not work from command line? I'm confused by this.....

Thanks

Andy

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jlevie

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watsonaw

ASKER

Many thanks for your assistance folks. After several attempts of persuading the exchange admin team there was a change to be made it was successfully completed, and sendmail sprang into life.