Hi, I'm using mandrake 9.1 for the moment and I want to be able to recieve email on my computer. I don't mean using kmail or stuff like that but i want to be able to send mail to my computer so it arrives in /var/spool/mail by mailing to login@hostname

Since I'm using mandrake i have the shorewall firewall where i enabled the mail-server so i can recieve emails. But still it is not possible for me to recieve any.
telnet localhost 25 doesn't work although it should.

Does anybody has an idea. I did the normal mandrake install and i didn't change anything in my configurations files.

thanks
klaas

I even have installed postfix ... but still nothing ... I need help ... I'm such a newbie

I think i found it what the problem is, but i don't know how to solve it. If i do netstat -l then I see that it gives
tcp 0 0 localhost:smtp *:* LISTEN

i think that the localhost should be changed into * but i don't know how

You are correct, in that the smtpd is not listening on the network port, only for local connections (from the same host). There may be a couple of reasons for this. The first thing I'd do is shutdown the sendmail daemon using "/etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail stop", and start it again (/etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail start), then check the log (/var/log/messages) to see if sendmail is complaining about anything. It could be that sendmail is configured correctly or completely. I could also be your firewall configuration, or it could even be that /etc/hosts.allow doesn't allow connections to sendmail. It's hard to be specific without knowing your exact configuration, including DNS setup, etc.

hosts.allow is as empty as it can be. there is no complaining, it just says that postfix is succesfull. i have no clue anymore

does "/etc/hosts.deny" have anything in it?

nope, both are empty

I tried to connect with telnet to localhost 25 and that gave no problem. Immediat the postfix program started (or something like that)

What i do not understand is when i do netstat -a | grep LISTEN| grep tcp I get the sockets or ports or whatever that are listening. The strange thing is that there is localhost:smtp the one that should be *:smtp but when i change my firewall, for example not allowing anything at all or allowing everything. that netstat -a|grep LISTEN |grep tcp doesn't change at all.
smtp stays always in it. ssh also and httpd also ... even after switching them off. Or isn't it possible to see it there which ports are open with the firewall. And where does netstat gets his info from? somehow i must be able to set that localhost to *

It is the sendmail daemon that is responsible for specifying socket options when it opens it's server socket on port 25 and listens for connections. What netstat -a is showing you is that sendmail has opened it's socket to receive connections only from "localhost".

Your firewall can block incoming IP requests and your hosts.allow and hosts.deny tell the TCP/wrappers which connections to allow/deny, but your problem is most likely from sendmail itself. I did a quick scan of my sendmail documentation and configuration files, and I cannot find anywhere to specify port/bind options. Based on my experience with sendmail (I've setup a half-dozen sendmail servers), sendmail must know the name of the host on which it is running. You may want to check your hostname and domain name. Also, you may need a DNS that reports the hostname correctly.

Okay thanks, this explained a lot to me. and i think the solution is comming ... I don't know when, but it is comming

okay i know now that it is a problem with the postfix program opening a port for only localhost no i checked the config file of postfix using "postconf" and i see in the shitload of output the following

mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8

could it be that mynetworks should be something else?

okay i installed sendmail instead of postfix. it worked imediately ... although it works now ... i still want to find out why it is still not working with postfix

Oops! I guess I'm showing my age, or my ignorance. I didn't realize that postfix was an SMTP agent. I presumed you were using sendmail. Ok, then, the problem was somewhere in the postfix configuration. If you want to find it, I'd suggest grepping for the words "listen" and "port" in the configuration files. You may find your answer there.

Sorry for answering the wrong question.

Since I know nothing about postfix, I can only guess what "mynetworks" should be. In most cases, the default for servers is to listen on all available interfaces. Therefore, my first shot would be to comment out the "mynetworks" line and let it default.

If that doesn't work, read the man pages!

Thanks djtoltz, you realy helped me out.