Hi. I've an fc5 box at home. I'd like to be able to send emails to the internet (outside home network) with something simple like this

cat /etc/hosts | mail foo@bar.com

my ISP's smtp host requires authentication. Any idea how to get the fc5 machine to automatically send all emails to the ISP's smtp & authenticate in the process?

TIA!!!

tough job man.
now a days most of the admins don't allow mail relaying.
otherwise you could have easily "telnet" into the ISP port number 25 SMTP port and send mails from any fake id to any genuine mail id.
Some government servers still allow them . Search them on your own risk.

regards

You want to configure your FC5 sendmail to send all mail to the ISP, which you can do in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc with (for example):

define(`SMART_HOST',`mail.optonline.net')dnl
MASQUERADE_AS(`optonline.net')dnl
FEATURE(masquerade_envelope)dnl

You need to have your sendmail authenticate, so also add:

FEATURE(`authinfo')dnl

In /etc/mail/authinfo:

Authinfo:mail.optonline.net "U:<username>" "I:<identity>" "P:<password>" "M:LOGIN PLAIN"

Rebuild the sendmail.cf:

make -C /etc/mail

Restart sendmail:

service sendmail restart

Thank you.

I followed your instructions (had to adjust hosts.allow also but nevermind that).

I see this in the maillog:

But the email never arrives.

mailq shows an empty queue.

Never must be a relative term; I've seen emails take an hour to go between ISPs. If you receive a successful 'sent', then the mail was accepted by your ISP. That's all you can do with email. Delivery is now up to the intermediate systems.

You are right!

I just changed the msg from yahoo to gmail and it arrived fine!

Still waiting for hotmail & yahoo.. I can't believe they've such terrible mail servers.. Gmail rules!

The only problem is that the emails arrive like this:

<root@localhost.localdomain>

I want them to look like they came from my official ISP email. I have this:

[root@fedora ~]# cat /etc/mail/userdb
root@fedora susanb@rr.com
[root@fedora ~]#

but that doesn't seem to be doing anything. What am I missing?

In /etc/mail/sendmail.mc add:

MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(`rr.com')dnl
FEATURE(masquerade_entire_domain)dnl

Rerun the make and restart of sendmail.

Now all your emails look like they come from "user@rr.com".

If you are sending email as root, and want it to appear to come from another userid (for example, "susanb") with the mail command, you need to su to that user:

/bin/su - susanb -c "/bin/mail -s \"Some Subject\" destination-user@destination-domain.com" < somefile

OK, I'll try this when I get home. BTW, do I still need to keep userdb file or no?

the amazing thing is that I was playing around with this and I rolled back all the changes I made, with authinfo & stuff, returning sendmail to its pristine state and guess what -- everything still worked! I was such an idiot, I didn't have to do anything. Apparently, FC5's sendmail just works right outta the box...

Just tried your suggestion, didn't do anything. Emails still arrive from localhost.localdomain

Jun 6 17:10:12 fedora sendmail[7533]: k56LABsg007531: to=<XXXXX@gmail.com>, ctladdr=<root@localhost.localdomain> (0/0), delay=00:00:01, xdelay=00:00:01, mailer=esmtp, pri=120508, relay=gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. [66.249.83.114], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (OK 1149628305 i16si93078wxd)
[root@fedora ~]#

so... what can I do to troubleshoot this?

[root@fedora mail]# egrep "MASQ|domain" sendmail.mc
MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(rr.com)dnl
FEATURE(masquerade_entire_domain)dnl
FEATURE(always_add_domain)dnl

I think that's my bad; forgot the quoting:

MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(`rr.com')dnl

You shouldn't need the userdb.

no good. m4 the file, restart:

[root@fedora ~]# m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
[root@fedora ~]# service sendmail restart
Shutting down sendmail: [ OK ]
Shutting down sm-client: [ OK ]
Starting sendmail: [ OK ]
Starting sm-client: [ OK ]
[root@fedora ~]# cat /etc/services | mail XXXXXX@gmail.com


in the file:

dnl define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp.your.provider')
MASQUERADE_DOMAIN(`rr.com')dnl
FEATURE(`masquerade_entire_domain')dnl
dnl #

i tried with & w/o quotes in the FEATURE section... still:



Date: Tue, 6 Jun 2006 19:59:13 -0400
From: root <root@localhost.localdomain>
Message-Id: <200606062359.k56NxDSR007811@localhost.localdomain>
To: XXXXXX@gmail.com

man.. I hate to keep bugging you but what do you think the problem is???

Sorry, I'm at a loss. Can you check your sendmail.mc to make sure that all references to "localhost.localdomain" are commented out? Also, verify that your sendmail.cf has been properly created. You should see entries like:

DSmail.rr.com
DMrr.com

It might be necessary to set your machine's domain name to 'rr.com' (via system-config-network) - but I don't remember having to do that.

Perhaps someone else can chime in with a suggestion?

I just noticed - your smart host is commented out. Instead of:

dnl define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp.your.provider')

You should have:

define(`SMART_HOST',`mail.rr.com')dnl

Note: replace 'mail.rr.com' with the SMTP server for rr.com.

WOW! This is all so complicated!

Use sendEmail. It works exactly as you want:

echo "text body" | sendEmail [options]

In the options you specify recipient, sender AND password authentication as required by your ISP.

Look for both sendEmail and sendemail package. I always forget whether there is a caps in the name or not.

jlinkels