Hi all

This is my first post cos I have spent the best part of a day searching on here and on Google for an answer and thought someone may be able to quickly solve my problem.

I am trying to get mail working on a Redhat Linux box (well on 14 of them to be more precise). I have it working fine on one so I copied the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf and /etc/aliases files to one of the other servers, stopped and restarted sendmail and ran newaliases but still can't get it to work.

The problem I have is that the aliases don't seem to be working so I can quite happily email myself -

e.g.

mail npinney@blahblah.com

and I get that mail come through.

When I try to mail root however it disappears forever.

The aliases file has this on the end....

root: npinney@blahblah.com

but I never get the mail sent to me at my email address.

Anyone got any ideas?

Any help is much appreciated. Thanks

What do your logs tell you? Any errors? Are you trying to send to another domain or one of your own? The recieving end might be rejecting the emails if your using a DHCP connection or the like for your current mail server. Also is this mail server an actual domain server you've setup with real information like with MX records, DNS configured properly, etc?

Thanks for the reply.

The maillog says this after I tried to "mail root".....

Aug 24 14:12:43 tubaircaropt4 sendmail[8046]: unable to qualify my own domain na
me (tubaircaropt4) -- using short name
Aug 24 14:12:43 tubaircaropt4 sendmail[8046]: j7OEChPe008046: from=root, size=34
, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<200508241412.j7OEChPe008046@tubaircaropt4>, relay=ro
ot@localhost
Aug 24 14:12:43 tubaircaropt4 sendmail[8193]: j7OEChQS008193: from=<root@tubairc
aropt4>, size=306, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<200508241412.j7OEChPe008046@tubairc
aropt4>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]
Aug 24 14:12:43 tubaircaropt4 sendmail[8193]: j7OEChQS008193: to=<root@tubaircar
opt4>, delay=00:00:00, mailer=local, pri=30306, dsn=4.4.3, stat=queued
Aug 24 14:12:43 tubaircaropt4 sendmail[8046]: j7OEChPe008046: to=root, ctladdr=r
oot (0/0), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, pri=30034, relay=[127.
0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (j7OEChQS008193 Message accepted for de
livery)

I am sending to the same domain.

We are using static IP addresses.

The mail server is an exchange 5.5 server which is configured to receive emails relayed from our external mail message handling company (message labs). MX records for our email domain point to the Message labs email servers.

It does have internal DNS configured correctly

It does works fine for one of my Linux servers with the same setup (more or less) to the others I am trying to configure so I figured it would work for all of them.

I can telnet to the mail server as well ...

telnet oscar-connector.britanniaairways.com 25
Trying 10.35.7.75...
Connected to oscar-connector.britanniaairways.com (10.35.7.75).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 oscar-connector.britanniaairways.com ESMTP Server (Microsoft Exchange Intern
et Mail Service 5.5.2657.72) ready


Hope this helps a bit???

I would think it's a sendmail configuration problem according to the first line in your logs:

Aug 24 14:12:43 tubaircaropt4 sendmail[8046]: unable to qualify my own domain na
me (tubaircaropt4) -- using short name

If this sendmail server is only forwarding the messages to the Exchange server, can it actually communicate to the Exchange server by ping, etc? Does it recognize it by name if that's what it's using? Do you see any logs on the Exchange server that tells you the messages are even being recieved or attempted to be recieved?

Yes I can ping the server ....

#ping oscar-connector.britanniaairways.com
PING oscar-connector.britanniaairways.com (10.35.7.75) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from oscar-connector.britanniaairways.com (10.35.7.75): icmp_seq=0 ttl=128 time=3.69 ms
64 bytes from oscar-connector.britanniaairways.com (10.35.7.75): icmp_seq=1 ttl=128 time=0.276 ms
64 bytes from oscar-connector.britanniaairways.com (10.35.7.75): icmp_seq=2 ttl=128 time=1.14 ms

--- oscar-connector.britanniaairways.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 2009ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.276/1.705/3.695/1.451 ms, pipe 2

so it is in the /etc/hosts file as well.

We lowered the logging level on the exchange servers as it was generating too many logs so there is not much in them I am afraid. It just shows the telnets that I did.

Why does it manage to email me ok but can't resolve the alias for root?

I also get emails sent to me about non-delivery ....

The original message was received at Sat, 20 Aug 2005 04:46:35 GMT
from localhost
with id j7K4kZL1001870

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<root@tubaircaropt4>

----- Transcript of session follows -----
451 tubaircaropt4: Name server timeout
Message could not be delivered for 5 days
Message will be deleted from queue

The original message was received at Mon, 15 Aug 2005 04:03:00 GMT
from localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
<root@tubaircaropt4>

----- Transcript of session follows -----
451 tubaircaropt4: Name server timeout
451 tubaircaropt4: Name server timeout
451 tubaircaropt4: Name server timeout
451 tubaircaropt4: Name server timeout
Message could not be delivered for 5 days
Message will be deleted from queue
451 tubaircaropt4: Name server timeout