I'm running a new installation of Red Hat 9 with the latest and greatest install of sendmail, updated using yum.

To begin with, sendmail was working fine for relaying localhost mail. But I want to use it as my public email server.

So, I was following a tutorial on configuring sendmail. It left me with a completely hosed sendmail configuration, where both the sendmail and sm-client services wouldn't start.

Luckily, I'd backed up the /etc/mail/sendmail.mc and /etc/mail/sendmail.cf files. Or so I'd thought I was in luck.

After restoring these backed up files, the sendmail service starts, but the sm-client won't, complaining that No local mailer defined and that QueueDirectory (Q) option must be set.

In the restored (and originally working) sendmail.cf file, it clearly sets the QueueDirectory, with the line O QueueDirectory=/var/spool/mqueue.

I've rebuilt the sendmail.cf file using m4 sendmail.mc > sendmail.cf with no changes.

I've googled around quite a bit and haven't found any successful solutions - only others that have reported similar problems.

Any ideas?