sendmail broke after rh 9 upgrade
 

I had a perfectly working server using rh7. So seeing as it worked great, I upgraded it to rh9. I got everything working again except sendmail from outside the server.

I use this server for group email and have the users send email to username@mail.workgroup

the email clients check their email fine but when sending, it gives them the error cannot connect to server (this is using outlook express). It seems like relaying is turned off or something.

Can somebod help me configure this so it will send email to the local users on the machine. I do not want it to send anywhere else

Edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and comment out the line (add a leading 'dnl'):

dnl # The following causes sendmail to only listen on the IPv4 loopback address
dnl # 127.0.0.1 and not on any other network devices. Remove the loopback
dnl # address restriction to accept email from the internet or intranet.
dnl #
dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl
d

I seem to recall that this didn't used to be the default, but I'm not sure. That may explain your confusion.

Don't forget to restart sendmail:

# service sendmail restart

so the dnl in front of it comments it out? I tried deleting this line but it still doesn't seem to work. Anything else I can try?

change the line to:


DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp, Name=MTA')dnl

don't comment it out.

with or wothout the dnl in front of it?

without...

Yes, dnl "comments it out". The real answer is that it tells the macro processor to delete the rest of the line. Same thing to you and me. And the trailing 'd' in my earlier post is just a paste error. Please ignore.

But, as I re-read this I think I've misled you. Later versions of sendmail have changed the layout of some of the config files - check out /etc/mail/access. It looks like relaying IS turned off, except for localhost by default.

heathpitts...a good GUI for sendmail configuring is a great app called webmin. You can find it at www.webmin.com. It lets you easily add relay hosts, masquerades, aliases, etc...

Of course it's always good to learn by command line as well ;)

I have tried webmin before and i sort of feel like I am cheating (lol). But when I do pull it up it says sendmail.cf file is in a different location.

In the /etc/mail/access file how would i add the range 192.168.1.1 - 254

just type in 192.168.1.0 RELAY

yeah, but I hope you're only using 192.168 as an example. Anyone could set that IP up and use you as an open relay. You should use the actual IP range that you are masking.

did you also do anything to your hosts.allow or hosts.deny files?

It still will not work.

Sendmail is running and working. If I telnet to the machine from the command line to 192.168.1.1 port 25 it will not connect if i connect from localhost port 25 it connects just fine

You're confusing me as you never answered the previous question. Is the 192.168 IP address an example or are you really using it?? If you're really using it, then that's your problem. You need to use the actual IP assigned by the ISP. I'm also assuming you have port 25 open on your firewall?

ok this is for a workgroup email server it does not send messages to any other servers just to the local machine accounts.

Is there any level of firewall running?

Can you ping the computer?

no firewall. I can connect to the imap server on port 143 just fine. I just can't send emails to the local accounts by using port 25.

Someone mentioned before about hosts.allow and deny

Seeing as I'm denying everything in hosts.deny I had to put in hosts.allow

sendmail:ALL

to allow access.



Just about the only other things I changes in sendmail.cf was this line:

O DaemonPortOptions=Port=smtp,Addr=192.168.1.100,127.0.0.1, Name=MTA

Although I did the bad thing and edited it manually after making a backup of it

Apart from that just the usual entries in the access file for relaying got it working for me.