I'm trying to set up my smartd and mdadm daemon so when anything fails, my computer will send an email to my gmail. My linux machine is plugged into the university's network and to prevent spam, the university blocks any mail not going through their SMTP. according to the help site:

Outgoing Server: smtp.university.edu
Server Requires Authentication: No
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL): No
Port: 25

so to get the daemon to send emails to me when my HD fail, I would have to config sendmail right? I went through a few tutorials yesterday with m4 and such but have not been able to figure out how exactly I can configure sendmail to make it work.

thanks in advance for the help!

The answer is smarthost. In your sendmail config file, look for DS. It should be this:
-twantrd

EDIT: Too slow twantrd already suggested smarthost...
It sounds like you need to configure your sendmail to use smtp.university.edu as a smarthost. In your sendmail.mc file, add the following line:
Then, re-generate your sendmail.cf file and re-start sendmail.

thank for the initial answer. i'm actually not sure where I'm suppose to find the sendmail.mc file so there is a sendmail.cf file in /etc/mails but I don't seem to have a sendmail.mc (I'm running Slackware) So I've looked up a tutorial and it told me to do: m4 {directory of the file} sendmail.mc > sendmail.cf .
If only I can find the .mc file or if somoene could link me to a sample file for Slackware thanks

edit for readability

Although I prefer to generate my .cf file each time, as twantrd posted you can modify /etc/mail/sendmail.cf directly and add the DS line to specify your smarthost.

and restart sendmail after making the change .

-twantrd

this is what I get

$ sendmail -bt
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 2: invalid argument to V line: "ERSIONID(TLS support"
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 5: unknown configuration line "define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp.univserity.edu')dnl"
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 6: fileclass: cannot open 'ATURE(authinfo)FEATURE(use_cw_file)FEATURE(use_ct_file)FEATURE(mailertable,hash': No such file or directory
Warning: .cf file is out of date: sendmail 8.13.8 supports version 10, .cf file is version 0
No local mailer defined
ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked)


I guess I shouldn't have tried to generate the .cf file last time... now it's all messed up

does anyone know where I can get a default .cf file for slackware?

okay I tried to use m4 again to rebuild the sendmail.cf file so here's my sendmail.mc file

divert(-1)
#
# configuration file
#
divert(0)
VERSIONID(`@(#)sendmail.mc 8.7 (Linux) 3/5/96')
OSTYPE(`linux')
dnl
#stanford is our smart host
define(`SMART_HOST', `smtp.stanford.edu')
dnl
# Support the local, smtp and uucp mail transport protocols.
MAILER(`local')
MAILER(`smtp')
MAILER(`uucp')
LOCAL_NET_CONFIG
# This rule ensures that all local mail is delivered using the
# smtp transport, everything else will go via the smart host.
R$* < @ $* .$m. > $* $#smtp $@ $2.$m. $: $1 < @ $2.$m. > $3
dnl
#
FEATURE(rbl)
FEATURE(access_db)

I used m4 to build the .cf and restarted sendmail in rc.d. I tried sending myself an email to both my university and gmail account... neither worked

Did you install a Slackware package for sendmail? I'd expect there to be a default .cf file or a standard .mc file that you can start from. I built mine from sources for a mail setup that's not quite standard so it's probably not going to be much good for your setup.

If there is no backup and you really screwed up the conf, then re-install sendmail.

-twantrd