Hi,

Two quick things about the email:

If you want to see what's going on do an:

strace -t -otracefile.text mail -v jdunfee@blah.net

This will let you see the SMTP verbage (you should be connecting
to localhost by default now) and the "tracefile.text" will have the
system calls and timestamps for what was happening underneath
the covers. You'll the see the dns delays there (probably 4 5 sec
delays if that is the problem). Just watch for the big gaps in the
timestamps and see if they match a poll for the dns lookup.

As for where sendmail check for DNS, you can insert a file in
/etc/mail to reorder this. By default I believe the name is
/etc/mail/services.switch (configurable in the .mc file).
If you want to set it up for your /etc/hosts file first, the file
should have this line in it:

hosts files dns

(like resolv.conf).

Good luck.

well i finally got around the problem, by uninstalling sendmail. deleting the directory and executables and then re-installing from the original RPMs off the redhat 9 disk.

i dont know why upgrading to the latest version causes these slow downs. since then ive used the automatic up2date program to update sendmail and its worked fine.

crazy!

Since you stated in your earlier posting

perhaps the problem was caused by mixing packages from different places ie sendmail.org and RedHat. It is always best to avoid such practices since RedHat and other distributors often make subtle changes which can cause compatibility problems in trying to mix their version and that of another
distribution or originating upstream source.

myself also have the same problem..how to get sendmail to use user@domain.com instead of user@host.domain.com.