Sendmail starting up slow?
 

Is it supposed to take about 3 minutes to start up? I use Slackware, lilo as a boot manager..how can I get it to start up faster?

What do the following commands say :

"grep hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf"

and

"cat /etc/hosts"

You've probably got some kind of resolving problem. I guess it has something to do with the hostname "localhost" not able to resolve.

[scott@~] $ grep hosts /etc/nsswitch.conf
hosts: files dns
[scott@~] $ cat /etc/hosts
#
# hosts This file describes a number of hostname-to-address
# mappings for the TCP/IP subsystem. It is mostly
# used at boot time, when no name servers are running.
# On small systems, this file can be used instead of a
# "named" name server. Just add the names, addresses
# and any aliases to this file...
#
# By the way, Arnt Gulbrandsen <agulbra@nvg.unit.no> says that 127.0.0.1
# should NEVER be named with the name of the machine. It causes problems
# for some (stupid) programs, irc and reputedly talk. :^)
#

# For loopbacking.
127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.0.1 x1-6-00-00-c5-5f-61-1c 12.209.187.27

# End of hosts.

wait..i think i see the problem.

Nope, still doesnt start up any faster. I changed the:

127.0.0.1 x1-6-00-00-c5-5f-61-1c 12.209.187.27

line to:

12.209.187.27 x1-6-00-00-c5-5f-61-1c

Make a backup - just in case - for the file "/etc/hosts".

(for example, with "cp -p /etc/hosts /etc/hosts.backup.20030630")

OK, if you've done that, remove the line : "12.209.187.27 x1-6-00-00-c5-5f-61-1c" from the file "/etc/hosts", so that the contents of "/etc/hosts" only look like this :

127.0.0.1 localhost

To restart Sendmail, use the command :

"date; killall -s HUP sendmail; tail /var/log/maillog"

ps... Can you post the output of the command above?

Does Sendmail start any faster than before?

I took that line out of my hosts file, but it still starts up slow when I restart. And I ran the command:

[scott@~] $ date; killall -s HUP sendmail; tail /var/log/maillog
Mon Jun 30 14:35:08 MDT 2003
sendmail(409): Operation not permitted
sendmail(412): Operation not permitted
sendmail: no process killed
Jun 30 14:28:03 12 sm-mta[409]: restarting /usr/sbin/sendmail due to signal
Jun 30 14:28:04 12 sm-msp-queue[412]: restarting /usr/sbin/sendmail due to signal
Jun 30 14:28:04 12 sm-msp-queue[412]: My unqualified host name (12) unknown; sleeping for retry
Jun 30 14:28:04 12 sm-mta[409]: My unqualified host name (12) unknown; sleeping
for retry
Jun 30 14:30:10 12 sm-mta[408]: My unqualified host name (12) unknown; sleeping
for retry
Jun 30 14:31:10 12 sm-mta[408]: unable to qualify my own domain name (12) -- using short name
Jun 30 14:31:10 12 sm-mta[409]: starting daemon (8.12.8): SMTP+queueing@00:25:00Jun 30 14:31:10 12 sm-msp-queue[410]: My unqualified host name (12) unknown; sleeping for retry
Jun 30 14:32:10 12 sm-msp-queue[410]: unable to qualify my own domain name (12)
-- using short name
Jun 30 14:32:11 12 sm-msp-queue[412]: starting daemon (8.12.8): queueing@00:25:00

Modify the contents of the file "/etc/hosts", so that it only looks like this :

127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost

and restart Sendmail or reboot your PC.

ps. To restart Sendmail you should do the following :

"su -"
<your root password>
"date; killall -s HUP sendmail; tail /var/log/maillog"

But if you want to check the boot speed of your computer, you might want to do a restart.

I had the same issue about 2 years ago on RH7.0 and eventually it totally brought down the system and I had to do some serious kludging to get it to work again.

In the end? The /var partition had filled up because the log rotation wasn't working efficiently.

Make sure your logs directories aren't filling up too rapidly. If so, you're going to need to screw around with your rotation. I don't know exactly why it stops on sendmail (I could understand if it did that on qpopper or another POP3/IMAP daemon) but it did the same for me. That may very well be your problem.

Im having the same problem and I did what cropcircle suggested, well then I wasn't able to get to the internet

FX

Sendmail is sleeping on me!
 

I'm having the same problem. I just installed a brand spanking new RedHat 9 on a machine I just built. Here's a sample of the errors in /var/log/maillog:
It looks like the problem reflects what cropcircle was suggesting, but I guess my networking knowledge is lacking. I can't see anything wrong with these files; here are the files of interest (tango is what I named the host):

(/etc/hosts)
(/etc/resolv.conf)
(/etc/host.conf)
(/etc/nsswitch.conf)

If anyone can spot the error, I would really appreciate feedback. Also, I'm not using dhcp, but rather static ip's on the lan. I did not know what to put in the network configuration for [color=dark-blue]DNS Search Path.:confused:[/color]

Solution:

I just resolved the problem.. at least in my case, the problem was that I didn't configure a domain name in the network configuration setup. The network and everything was working fine w/out it, except sendmail.

If anyone is still having this problem, make sure you declare a domain name, which for some reason unknown to me, is the DNS Search Path field in the setup for RedHat. Also- make sure that both the hostname and the domain name are in the /etc/hosts file. Example:

Does it matter what I enter for the domain name? I've got the smae problem with sendmail daemon and MSP queue runner. Do I just need to make any domain name? I've got the computer hooked up to a DSL modem via ethernet, so I don't need to configure the settings manually to connect, just run dhcpcd or have it connected at boot.

Could I simply disable sendmail?

Domain Name
 

If your not sure what to put as a domain name - just use localdomain (assuming that the machine is local)

I had this same problem, thanks for helping out!!