Cannot send out email with Fedora Core 2
 

Hello,

I just recently did a fresh install of FC2 replacing RH9. I'm having trouble with outbound email. I use evolution to read email and manage my accounts. In previous Linux setups I just would name my smarthost relay in sendmail.mc, build sendmail.cf, restart sendmail and everything would be fine. Now I'm having a problem, first I cannot make sendmail.cf because an include file is missing. These are the relevant lines in the Makefile:

%.cf: %.mc
@if test -f /usr/share/sendmail-cf/m4/cf.m4; then \
umask 022; \
mv -f $@ $@.bak; \
m4 $< > $@; \
fi

However, the /usr/share/sendmail-cf/m4/cf.m4 file is not present and thus a new sendmail.cf file is not built.

I did two tests, one with /bin/mail and another with /usr/sbin/sendmail.

> /bin/mail -s 'test message' buchanan69@comcast.net
This is a test message.
.
Cc:

> tail /var/log/maillog
Oct 7 20:17:40 banach sendmail[3774]: i980HeYA003774: from=bob, size=74, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<200410080017.i980HeYA003774@banach.millersville.edu>, relay=bob@localhost
Oct 7 20:17:40 banach sendmail[3774]: i980HeYA003774: to=buchanan69@comcast.net, ctladdr=bob (500/500), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, pri=30074, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]

Can anyone see what my problem is? Why is a connection on the loopback address being used?

For the second test:

> /usr/sbin/sendmail -v buchanan69@comcast.net
This is a test.
.
buchanan69@comcast.net... Connecting to [127.0.0.1] via relay...
buchanan69@comcast.net... Deferred: Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]

If anyone could tell me what I'm doing wrong, I would be very appreciative. If there are alternatives to delivering outbound mail besides sendmail, I'd be happy to try to set that up as well, if you would be so kind as to give me some pointers to a HOWTO.

Thanks,
Bob Buchanan
rbuchanan@millersville.edu

I'm not very good at this but it seems like that you have problem with your loopback interface (127.0.0.1) . Give a look at your network/connection settings. Maybe the problem is there.

Good luck

Thanks for the reply, but more specifically what am I supposed to be checking my network connections for? I have a static IP address, primary, secondary, and tertiary nameservers in /etc/resolv.conf and as far as I can tell, networking seems to be fine.

Thanks,
Bob Buchanan

Problem solved (I think). I had failed to install the sendmail-cf RPM during system installation. Thus my sendmail.cf file was not be regenerated during the make process. Live and learn.