Sendmail is so slow to start!
 

Well I seem to have done something, actually I installed the POP3/IMAP RPM for RH7.2...

And now when Linux boots it stops on the Starting Sendmail line for like 3 minutes then continues on like nothing is wrong. Everything works fine except when I have to restart Sendmail it does the customary 3 minute wait each time!

Any ideas why installing that RPM would slow down Sendmail's start time?

Name resolution problem?
 

Not sure what the POP/IMAP RPM had to do with it, but slow sendmail starts normally stem from name resolution problems. Is your machine's local hostname in /etc/hosts or valid in your DNS config?

...
 

my local host name is in the /etc/hosts

but I am not sure what you mean by the DNS config (newbie)

could you perhaps expand on that....

thanks.

yeah that's quite a common problem...

check the output of /etc/mail/error.log or similar after starting it andit should make some comments about being unable to find the host.. waitign 60 seconds... or something like that. you need to ensure that /etc/hosts is right, and also /etc/mail/access (i think.. it's something in the dir) contains the right ip/name pair for your system