Sendmail takes 5 minutes to start

glock19 · 01-28-2002, 07:31 PM

I've been trying to attach a primary slave HDD to my system, and it keeps crashing my linux box after about 5 minutes after linux has loaded. Anyway, I've tried different HDD's and different IDE cables, but I am still not able to get things stable.

So I have to continually shutdown and reboot my system. To make a long story short, when Linux loads it loads something called "sendmail". This takes about 5 FULL MINUTES to start. What is causing sendmail to take so long to start and can I do anything to make it start faster?

DavidPhillips · 01-28-2002, 09:33 PM

Setting the hostname and having it in /etc/hosts usually fixes the problem

or you can run setup and go into system services and turn sendmail off if you don't need it

acid_kewpie · 01-29-2002, 03:37 AM

check dmesg, there's probably a mention in there about sendmail not havign a valid hostname and waiting for 2 minutes at a time.

glock19 · 01-29-2002, 02:57 PM

No my hostname is ok and my hosts file is ok. I looked in /var/log/dmesg and didn't find anything about sendmail.

So why does sendmail take 5 minutes to start each time I boot my linux?

christyc · 02-01-2002, 11:25 AM

>or you can run setup and go into system services and turn >sendmail off if you don't need it

I'd like to do that...the same thing happens to me. I also read that sendmail can be used by others via internet for spamming etc..I don't thing I need sendmail....is what i read dramatic gossip, anyway? regarding above, are you talking about command-line "run setup?"

kill-hup · 02-01-2002, 12:54 PM

Sendmail can be used to send spam if you have it misconfigured to allow "relaying". Probably a good rule of thumb is if you don't need it and don't know how to set it up safely/properly, either seek help or shut it off

If you're not comfortable editing/unlinking rc files, you can do a 'chkconfig --del sendmail' to stop sendmail from being started by the system.

DavidPhillips · 02-01-2002, 01:16 PM

yes in RedHat you run setup from an xterm and it has most of your setup stuff in there, one of them being system services.

by default sendmail is local only.

it is not a problem

but I still say it's etc/hosts

that's about the only fix I know of for the sendmail failing to start quickly

acid_kewpie · 02-01-2002, 01:19 PM

sendmail is used for internal mail delivery to /var/spool/mail mail boxes, you need sendmail if you use fetchmail or such like. if you only ever get mail via imap or soemthing, you don't need sendmail. and sendmail is 100% internal by default so can't be abused at all.

DavidPhillips · 02-01-2002, 01:22 PM

Besides that sendmail rules.

I am really tired of hotmail, and I move around a lot at work, using different isp's so I need one email server to use, I have one at home so why not use it.

christyc · 02-01-2002, 01:33 PM

that is very helpful information. I am grateful for you guys and hope to be able to contribute suggestions rather than questions one day...