Hi all,

I am having trouble sending email externally from my machine.

I have a postfix installed but the sendmail command keeps logging to the mail error log that the "Host or domain not found. Name service error for name=smtp.x.y.z type=MX. Host not found, please try again".

I just want to send emails out and not store any mailboxes (this has Gforge installed on it). The machine doesn't have a DNS so was just setting my email to go directly to the server via the MTA. I set it as [smtp.x.y.z] also which apparently stops MX lookups (which obviously didn't work). I thought this would be a simple thing to set up but I must be missing something here.

Can someone help?

Thanks,

Craig

Can you ping smtp.x.y.z from that machine? It sounds like postfix is having problems resolving the name. You say that the machine has no DNS...do you mean it doesn't have any DNS servers configured or that it isn't running DNS? If it has no DNS servers configured then you'll have to refer to everything by IP address which is gonna be a pain.

Firstly thanks for the reply. Here's the response to your questions.

I can ping smtp.x.y.z and I believe that postfix is the problem. I have a DNS but it is external that my gateway knows about. The machine doesn't have a DNS server itself.

I did do a work around for the problem.

1. I edited the hosts file and set the IP address of the SMTP server. e.g. 203.a.b.c smtp.x.y.z
2. I edited the config file and said don't use DNS lookups.

The emails are now going through, but it seems a bit of a hack doesn't it?

That sounds odd. Postfix certainly shouldn't have a problem resolving DNS names. And you're right, that is a bit of a hack. What's in your /etc/resolv.conf file?

All it has in it is:

domain <mydomain>
nameserver 10.1.1.1

That nameserver is my gateway (ADSL router). Should I have the DNS servers in there instead. The ADSL router I have has the DNS server IP addresses setup in there.

yes, this file should have your dns address in it,not your gateway address