Hello,

Over the last week or so I've been working on establishing a linux server to host our domains. I've learned a lot, and accomplished a lot, thanks to many of you (thanks for all the help).

Anyway, I've got everything working except for one issue. I need sendmail to send messages that are handed to it via php. I can't seem to get it to work.

We've got three domains. domain1 is our primary domain, and then thereis domain 2 and domain 3. All of these servers are behind NAT. The linux server does web & database. A seperate Win2000 box does POP and SMTP mail. Most of the recipients of the php (web page) are located on the Win2000 box.

I'm wondering if the linux box is confused, because the linux box is named "domain1.com" and the recipients are "user@domain1.com" but they're on the Win2000 box, not on the linux box. I receive no errors from the php side of things. I just never get the messages. I've done sendmail -q thinking it had queued things, but nothing happens. No errors, and no results!

I checked sendmail.cf and have no idea if or what I should do with that. I haven't worked with sendmail that much (everyone has to start somewhere -- why not here).

Anyway, if anyone has some suggestions or help, I'd very much appreciate it. Our server is **almost** ready for production.

Thanks ahead of time,

Jason

Take a few moments and really reconsider your use of sendmail in this day and age. Offhand, I cannot think of a more cryptic and flawed MTA on Unix.

My personal preference is qmail but others will point you to Courier or Exim, which are both excellent MTAs.

If you decide to use qmail I can show you exactly how you do it. I'm running several virtual mail/web servers with qmail.

I finally got it to work. I didn't have the sendmail package installed from the mandrake cd. I find that unusual, as before I installed the package, 'whereis sendmail' would return '/usr/sbin/sendmail' (if it isn't installed, why is this file there?) Stupid mistake, but then again I'm learning.

If I had a large use for mail, I would consider something else (perhaps qmail). But all I'm doing is sending an occasional email from a "contact info" web page. Its not receiving email, it's not being used as an email server. It's just shooting off a few emails here and there.

Thanks for the response. If I need qmail installed in the near future, I'll know who to ask for help!

Jason

If all you're doing is sending mail out, try nullmailer instead. a zillion times smaller and you won't get rooted by the sendmail bug o the day.

Never heard of it before.

I've been using sendmail because it's common (you can find it on more than two-thirds of all linux boxes). Also, php is already configured to use sendmail. It's just easier to do that than set up something else.

Your suggestion is definitely worth thinking about. Is it a program that comes with Mandrake 8.2? Or would you have to install it?

I *seriously* doubt that. Perhaps the "sendmail" binary, of which all the MTAs have... PHP just interfaces to that binary so nullmailer would be transparent to PHP.

It's to be installed; I don't think there's a package for it anywhere.

There is a nullmailer package. It's at untroubled.org

Actually, this leads to a problem I'm having. When I tried
installing the .rpm file for nullmailer, it said something about
needing supervise-scripts.

Does anyone know a way to install nullmailer without needing
supervise scripts?

akohlsmith,

Sendmail is cryptic and flawed? Hmmmmm... I agree with you that it isn't on 2/3 of all Linux boxes, but for Enterprise level usage, it is #1 by FAR. Over 90% of all enterprise mail servers on the internet run sendmail on some form of UNIX platform, while the remaining percentage is pretty much MS Exchange. Sendmail is cryptic, I agree, but it is not exactly overly flawed. It is also the most configurable MTA there is. I do agree, though, that for most people setting up a small to medium network, sendmail is a bit much (Postfix is a good alternative, as is Exim). But for enterprise, trust me... There is nothing better.

Chris