heh, i never did understand sendmail. first time im really working with it though. from the server side that is.

dig mrant.ath.cx yields:

; <<>> DiG 9.2.2 <<>> mrant.ath.cx
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 51373
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;mrant.ath.cx. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
mrant.ath.cx. 54 IN A 219.184.112.13

;; Query time: 972 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.0.1#53(192.168.0.1)
;; WHEN: Thu Dec 11 21:24:58 2003
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 46

on the server. on a client:
the same thing.

last resort... http://www.sendmail.org/faq/section4.html#4.5

I don't have any sendmail.cf files to play with here (we don't use it)

hmm i thought that link solved the problem, but it seems i was wrong...
thanks for all the help though.

i created the local-hosts-name file, but i have the feeling sendmail is not readinf the file. i created the file and restarted sendmail, but it doesnt seem to have any effect. this is what i added to the file:

mrant.ath.cx
mrant.ath.cx
localhost

in the form of the example given. as far as i understood it anyways.
http://www.faqs.org/docs/securing/chap22sec180.html

I'm think you should be looking for a file named sendmail.cf (/etc/mail/sendmail.cf ?) as that's the way slack is setup to config.

/me is a sendmail bozo

hmmm yeah, i found another method of applying this fix, adding "Cw mrant.ath.cx" to /etc/mail/sendmail.cf then restarting sendmail. this SEEMED to work, as in suddenly all the test emails that i sent earlier today were delivered and i was happy, then when i sent another test email, just to be sure, it timed out...

EDIT: wow, this is really strange. as i wrote the post, 13 old test messages i sent over a period of time just gor delivered includiing two error daemon messages. so i guess it works, its just not very pucntual in delivering the mail. ill see how things go over the next few days. thanks for all your help