POP3: local users uneable to receive local mail
 

Hi,
I have set up a Mail-server ( POP3, sendmail, fetchmail, procmail) on a SuSE 9.0 box. Everything works great but local users ( local network: home.com) cant receive mail from each other.

#When I check the mail queue using :
sendmail -bp
#I get a
host map: lookup (home.com): deferred
Deferred: Name server: pop3.home.com: host name lookup
#also when sending mail with
/usr/sbin/sendmail -q -v
# I get
<user1@home.com>...Transient parse error -- messages queued for future delivery
home.com: Name server timeout
.... Deferred: Name server: pop3.home.com: host lookup failure



I have not set up any dns in my network, but have entries of all machines in /etc/hosts

Plz help!

Do you have your hosts file set up similar to this:

localhost localhost.localdomain.yourmachinenickname localhost

??? If not, that may solve the problem.

I was getting terrific timeouts till I made hosts read that way.

I should add that this is a single desktop machine, not on a local network. I don't know if this works except for a single-machine setup.

THe layout is like this:

IP localhost.mynetwork localhost

it also has entries for other providers like smtp.mail.yahoo.com and others used by loacal users.