So I've been having this problem for a few days and have searched and read through pretty much everything I could find regarding the issue and still can't get it to work. Hoping to find some help here.

Hostname issues...when I telnet into my server on port 25, it reports the hostname as being localhost:

220 localhost SMTP; Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:21:03 -0500

I have changed the hostname on the server in just about every place I can imagine.

[root@weboflearning ~]# hostname
weboflearning.com


/etc/hosts:
# Do not remove the following line, or various programs
# that require network functionality will fail.
::1 localhost.localdomain localhost weboflearning.com
127.0.0.1 weboflearning weboflearning.com localhost


/etc/sysconfig/network:
NETWORKING=yes
NETWORKING_IPV6=no
HOSTNAME=weboflearning.com


Still, everytime I telnet in, it says localhost no matter what. Maybe I have something configured wrong? Any expert help on the matter would be greatly appreciated, as I'm starting to get pretty frustratd with it. Thanks in advance.

-Ryan

Oops - forgot to mention I'm running CentOS 5.2

Assuming you restarted networking after each of these changes.

What do you get if you telnet to yourself from that server?

It appears you've set the hostname in all the right places.

I just did:
[/etc]# telnet dothq.com 25
Trying 205.234.242.36...
Connected to dothq.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220-vps.dothq.com ESMTP Exim 4.69 #1 Thu, 02 Oct 2008 14:58:14 -0400
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
220 and/or bulk e-mail.

I did this from the dothq.com server.

Yeah I did restart the network after making each change.
I get the same thing when I telnet to myself from inside the server-

[root@weboflearning /]# telnet weboflearning.com 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to weboflearning.com (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 localhost SMTP; Thu, 02 Oct 2008 15:04:58 -0500


Still can't figure out why it might be doing this when the hostname is set permanently. It's gotta be some simple fix right in front of my face that I'm going to kick myself for later.

When I change the hostname, I run

Code:

find /etc -name '*' -exec grep -H localhost '{}' ';'

and change everything manually to the new hostname. But that is because I have had so much trouble changing the hostname on other RedHat variants.

From whence are you "teleneting in?" Perhaps what you're seeing is the host name of the telenet source, not of the destination. (Note: I haven't used telenet for 20 years, so that's just a guess.)

What SMTPd are you running? Does it have a "myhostname" configuration? Postfix does.

What MTA are you telnetting into - postfix or sendmail (or something else)?

What is the output of the hostname command?

FYI, the hostname is set in /etc/sysconfig/network with the line

HOSTNAME=whatever.example.com

Make sure you have the appropriate line in your /etc/resolv.conf for your domain, this fixed it for me.

search your-domain.whatever

Cheers.

try this one

echo "weboflearning.com" > /proc/sys/kernel/hostname

& also check the resolv.conf

Telnet is an xinetd or is it the date inetd service, that may need a restart or it could be that the mailer daemon needs a restart. I would that is read at start up by either or both.