I run a Redhat Linux installation with Sendmail.

RedHat 8.0
Sendmail 8.12.5

My installation has been running fine for quite a while. All of a sudden my system no longer accepts connections to port 25. I have tried from a remote mahcine and received "Connection Refused", and I have tried it on the Host machine itself and received "Connectuion Refused".

Again, this machine has been running fine, and I have made no recent changes. Can anyone help me track this issue down? I have checked my hosts.allow and hosts.deny files and they look fine. I have looked at my access file and it looks fine. When I do a "ps -aef" I see the Sendmail daemon running and "accepting connections".

I use xinetd for other services and see no reason why this little guy should all of a sudden start causing problems.

I have have checked DNS files and all host records prior to tracking it down to the refusing connection issue of port 25 on this machine. This machine is used only for accepting smtp mail and delivering to local clients. My outbound smtp server is fine and accepting connections fine.

ANy help will be very appreciated!!!!

Jz. - A mail deprived man for the moment!

my guess is the sendmail only accept connection from localhost (127.0.0.1)
what u can do is check the /etc/mail/sendmail.mc
look for this line:

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl

just remark the line & make -C /etc/mail

after that restart sendmail service & should be ok.

Remember, this installation has been running fine up until today. Also, I tried:

> telnet localhost 25

With the same result, connection refused.

When I did a

> netstat -anp | grep 25

I get nothing. When I do

> nmap -sT -O localhost

Port 25 does not list as listening. But if I do

> ps -aef

I do see Sendmail listed as accepting connections.

What am I missing?

Jz.

Oh, one more thing. There was a recent power outage before this behavior began. But everything else seems fine except smtp mail (I have imap and pop running on this machine as well, and they are functioning fine. Well, except that I have no mail to retrieve. )

Jz.