I have linux box using RH 7.1. I can use it as HTTP server but am unable to use it as mail or ftp server. I have installed sendmail and ftp server in my initial installation. FTP client from xp cannot connect to server. How and where should I start? I use windows xp as a client. Could anyone help me in this?

And also sendmail takes about 10 minutes to load during boot. What could be the problem?

hmm, where to start.

ps -A

will list all the programs running on your machine - verify that the services you want are running (ie sendmail). next, are you using a router? firewall? you may need to open the ports you need to use (cat /etc/services | grep ftp) or log in to your router (type 192.168.1.1 into firefox/ie explorer) and enable port forwarding. what else...

netstat -anp

will verify that sendmail (or whatever) is in fact listening on the proper port. hmm. ah, please tell us how you configured sendmail and your ftp service. did you edit any files? have you set them up at all? finally:

do you get any error messages? does it say anything when this happens? (run dmesg if you're not sure, or look through /var/log/maillog).

Thanks mcd for your reply. Atleast someone cared to help me. Appreciate that.

I think I am confusing everyone asking too many questions at a time. So I decided to go one at a time. I found sendmail running by checking with ps -A. I fixed the slow boot time by fixing host name in /etc/hosts. Now it is booting alright with no error message.

Now, how can I use sendmail? How can I name the mail server? Is it possible to have its(mail server's) name different than the hostname? I tried to open mail box from netscape but give me error messages like the "your name is not added or something"

Could you please help me step by step? I will try FTP server once I see mail server started and working.

well, you'd be best off with a guide tailored to your distro. google around for one, i'm sure it's out there. i use slackware, so i followed shilo's guide. you could probably use it too, but some things might be slightly different (i believe RH uses system v init, so instead of /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 you'd type /etc/rc.net/rc.inet1 or something, i don't know exactly). check out in particular the sections labelled "Get Yourself a Net Presence" and "Email is Good."

the one thing he doesn't cover is that by default sendmail is configured with relaying off. that means you can only use sendmail to send mail from the local machine. to ammend this, edit /etc/mail/access and add whichever ip addresses you want to access smtp from. for example, i want to use my mail server at home as an smtp server for any computer on my local network, and from my computer at work. so my /etc/mail/access file looks like this:

192.168.1 RELAY
63.201.98.110 RELAY

when you're done, save it, then type

make

and then restart sendmail. there are a lot of options, so google /etc/mail/access for more info. but make sure to read shilo's guide first. remember, www.google.com/linux is your best friend, and if you need help, post up!

hmm, thinking about it more, i'm not sure shilo's guide will help you. i still recommend that you read it though. i've just configured my mail server, but it's my first, so i can try to help you but i don't know that much. all my advice is going to be command-line based, because that's how i did mine. if you have xterm installed, use that. i ssh into my server, but it sounds like you have local keyboard access, so if you're in xterm it's the same thing.

if you type

netconfig

in a terminal, does it work? that's a great tool, but i'm not sure if it's slackware only... basically, i need to know your

hostname
domainname
ifconfig
route -n
cat /etc/resolv.conf
nmap localhost

i need to know whether you're running a firewall. have you forwarded ports from your router? which computer were you trying to use netscape from? did you register your IP with a domain name?

that's probably enough to get started. for any command (ifconfig, route, nmap, etc) you can type

man nmap

to get more information about what it is and how it can be used.