I have configured sendmail, but the problem I am having is that people are unable to send me mail.

I am able to send mail to any one like someone@mail.com, but if some trys to relpy back to me or send a new mail to me the email bounces.

What will I need to do to sort out this problem???

Also I am unable to get my mail client to use my smtp server.

Port 25 is opened on my router.

Thanks

Sendmail only sends mail. Perhaps you need to fetchmail to get your email.

# Common e-mail tools
sendmail - postfix - sends mail to local users (and internet when configured correctly)
fetchmail - gets mail from internet accounts (non-Hotmail type)
procmail - sorts and delivers into separate mailboxes
mutt - mail client that sucks less than all the others
Email the Linux Way
Suresh Ramasubramanian's email guide
The Linux Mail User HOWTO
The Linux Electronic Mail Administrator HOWTO
SquirrelMail web mail
Why use Hotmail when there is LinuxMail?
Gotmail, a utility to download mail from Hotmail type accounts

Thanks, I will have a look at fetchmail. One thing how come my mail clients are unable to connect to my smtp server.

So I will need sendmail to send outgoing mail, then fetchmail to get the mail from internet address. Then a pop3 server to view mail in a mail client.
Is that right???


Thanks again

I would guess that would depend upon your entire setup.

I set mine up in 1999, so if I remember correctly (the links should better better rememberers than I have):
sendmail will send mail to the internet and local accounts.
fetchmail will fetch mail from internet accounts and put into /var/spool/mail/<user>
procmail can take the mail in /var/spool/<user> and sort and deliver into specific mailboxes.
A mail client can access the user mail spool and their local mailboxes.
A pop3 server would allow some fetchmail service to access your mail over the internet.

If the mail is for your domain all mail will be routed to your machine (as set in your MX records), sendmail should recieve the mail and deliver it locally. You won't need fetchmail. Obviously you don't have a problem sending mail, but check you mail logs for anything coming in and being refused. Also post up your sendmail.cf maybe someone can spot something

i am also facing this problem of not getting mail hwo do i rectify it.

no no no no no this is wrong.


sendmail recieves mail on port 25 (the default SMTP port).

The issue is with the sendmail.mc file. There is a line that has to be changed to allow sendmail to recieve mail over the internet. In the file itself it acually says "uncomment this line if you want sendmail to recieve mail over the internet" is has an ip address in it "127.0.0.1", you have to either change that ip or comment out the line...i think i just changed the ip...dont really remember.

when u edit the sendmail.mc file you have to run the m4 command to generate a new sendmail.cf file.

make sure u backup your old sendmail.cf before replacing it with a new one just incase u mess something up.

Thanks guys..

OK I can recived mail from the internet but the mail is not going in /var/spool/mail/username the mail is getting queued up in /var/spool/mqueue

my log file show this

Aug 12 12:26:23 node sendmail[19896]: h7CBQNcJ019896: from=<www@ISP.net>, size=828, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<1060682466.3f38bae26415b@ISP.net>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=i-ISP.net [194.106.56.146]
Aug 12 12:26:23 node sendmail[19896]: h7CBQNcJ019896: to=<username@mydomain.com>, delay=00:00:00, mailer=local, pri=30715, stat=queued

heres my linux.mc file

divert(0)dnl
VERSIONID(`$Id: generic-linux.mc,v 8.1 2003/08/01 22:48:05 gshapiro Exp $')
OSTYPE(linux)dnl
DOMAIN(mydomain.com)dnl
FEATURE(nouucp, reject)dnl
FEATURE(local_procmail)dnl
FEATURE(relay_entire_domain)dnl
MAILER(procmail)dnl
MAILER(smtp)dnl

I have procmail install and to put all the mail in /var/spool/mail. here my procmailrc, the file is it /etc

VERBOSE=off
LOGABSTRACT=yes
LOGFILE=/var/log/procmail.log
COMSAT=no
MAILDIR=/var/spool/mail

I was unable to find any good docs on procmail, so could some please help me out with procmail, how the hell do you run it. Yes I did read the man pages.


Thanks again

honestly man, i dont know jack about senmail config files. i installed sendmail as it came with rh7.3, got the updated rpm from the rhn site, installed it, ran sendmail and i could send mail bout couldnt recieve it.

looked at the sendmail.mc file because looking at sendmail.cf is pointless as it is generated from sendmail.mc and sendmail.mc is easier to read, i saw that 1 line and changed it and also changed the bottom line to match my domain name ( i purchased one).

then it worked. procmail did its job and everything worked fine. even got imap to work with imp to give my server webmail capabilities (really nice stuff written in php).

i see your's says user@mydomain.com

also, make sure you arent running an open mail relay, sendmail is set up by default to not allow relaying. if you have an open mail relay, spammers will use your box to relay email to others all over the place and you box will be bogged down sending email out to unwated victims and u could get put on that spammer list. you can actually see these attempts in the log file.

basically im saying this: sendmail isnt hard to setup if you installed it with rh7.3, all u gotta do is edit like 2 lines in the sendmail.cf file, 3 tops and generate the new sendmail.cf

anything past that and i myself am lost.

oh, i also used webmin to configure my servers now for convienence (but i still try to understand it the hard way and often look at the config files because i dont trust everything.)

http://webmin.com

using that is actually how i found out to change the line to get sendmail to recieve email because i would have never looked at the sendmail.mc file if i had not installed webmin.

How did you run procmail?? did it run as a daemon if so how. How is your procmailrc configured. Does my sendmail.mc file look ok.

Thanks

Have you tried turning on the ipop3 daemon? if you do a "chkconfig --list" it might show you a listing for ipop3 if imap is installed. To turn it on just type in "chkconfig --level 35 ipop3 on" and it should work for you. I had the exact same problem and once I did that command, I was able to get mail. I don't know what the --level 35 part of the command does, but it was pointed out to me by someone here and I thought I should include it. Anyways, I hope that helps you out! Also, make sure that your firewall is set so you can have pop3 traffic going through it.

Travis Beehler