Hi, I'm real new to Linux...I just got my box setup. I'm using SuSE 8.2 Pro. I used Yast utility to setup sendmail but I didn't something wrong. I can send mail out, but I can't get any back. Any ideas? Thanks.

try to test the server like this ...

telnet 127.0.0.1 25

see if it's listening. Then if it answers do this ....

ehlo name

mail from: username.domain

rcpt to: username

data

enter the message ....

Hello!

Wassup?

enter a period on a line by itself ....

.

quit


you should have sent the message to the username

You will need to check the syslog (or however SuSE logs failed attempts) to see if sendmail is failing cause of reverse DNS lookups. This seems to be a problem that i found with the later versions of sendmail.

Personally i have switched to postfix due to its more versatile configuration system. You are able to restrict which inbound domains you will accept as well as the outbound domains. You can even configure it so that down to a user level can be rejected or dropped etc.

If you need further help please post some of the failures in the syslog into a reply and i will see if i can help out at all.

I would setup fetchmail so you could fetch it as well.

# Common e-mail tools
sendmail - postfix - sends mail to local users (and internet when configured correctly)
fetchmail - gets mail from internet accounts (non-Hotmail type)
procmail - sorts and delivers into separate mailboxes
mutt - mail client that sucks less than all the others
Email the Linux Way
Suresh Ramasubramanian's email guide
The Linux Mail User HOWTO
The Linux Electronic Mail Administrator HOWTO
SquirrelMail web mail
Gotmail, a utility to download mail from Hotmail type accounts

when you say get mail back are you refering to your linux box being used as a mail server that people will send your mail to?

You may want to use Mazilla's email system. That way, you can surf and get email notifed at the same time. Smiple to set up once you have the browser up, just click on the mail icon and the setup profile will come up. If you have any problems, check the help file, it covers it all.

We're getting a little carried away here. We need to figure out what he wants first.

There are many possibilities when it comes to receiving mail. It sounds like you want a mailserver that will allow people to send mail to you.


First you need to get the mail on the server. Then you can configure the client to retrieve it.

receive mail = mail server
retrieve mail = mail client

I'm not really trying to run a mail server. I'm just trying to send mail out once in awhile for notification purposes (which I can right now) and receive it if needed (which I don't really need now but would like in the future). I got this MAIL NOTIFICATION - Deferred: Connection refused by "host". Thanks.

yes, I see

You must have a mail server to do this. It sounds like it's not running.

Is the error what you get from trying to login with telnet

If you really don't want a mail server then you must use some other mail server for someone to send you mail.

You can't really have a mail server every once in a while, someone would need to contact you first and say "Hey, I'm going to send some email to you so crank up the mail server."

Most mail servers are setup for local use only for outgoing mail. If you want to send mail through it (relay) that needs to be configured as well.

Are you running telnet locally on the server?

127.0.0.1 is a local address

What is the mail server that's supposed to be running?

The two most popular are sendmail and postfix. You said you configured sendmail, so I will wager you are using .......sendmail! You stated it sent mail OK, so does that mean that you configured it to use your ISP as smarthost?

I still think you want fetchmail....that is, if you are getting internet mail from an ISP.

I'm at a university, I guess I need to find out from them...

do you have an email address that someone sends mail to you at.

This would pretty much tell us if you just need to configure an email client or fetchmail to retrieve mail. Which would also mean that you do not need to receive mail on your computer.

I have an email address here at my university, both university wide and one just for my department.

ok, you can get the mail server info from them and setup the two accounts on your email client. Or if you want you can use fetchmail.