Sendmail -- What Did I Forget?
 

I've done a clean install of Slackware 64-bit 14.0 (fully patched) on a laptop. On all my systems, sendmail "just works;" i.e., I can
and the message gets sent, but not on this one. The sendmail is running and looks the same on the new installation as it does on all the other boxes. I don't do any configuration for sendmail (and have a couple of applications that use it to send mail to the outside world with no problems).

What the heck have I forgotten to turn on? /etc/rc.d looks like

Check the log files of mail. Should be /var/log/mail.log. ls /var/log/mail.*. There should be four files.

A check of /var/log/maillog shows
Uh-oh, where the heck is pita.com.com coming from?

pita's entry in /etc/hosts is
and that is the content of /etc/HOSTNAME, looks like somebody, somewhere is adding the extra .com -- just who might that be?

Cripes.

I dunno much about sendmail but maybe it needs a FQDN? With a dot at the end. Okay lets check the hostnames and alike

It looks normal to me:
and
(that's KornShell, not BASH).

So, I dunno.

Hi tronayne,

I have a similar problem to yours so I think what I have found so far may help you

pita.com.com is probably coming from $w macros, it is assigned at sendmail start from the gethostname() function to get the (local)host name

You can try to run sendmail -bt -d8.8 to see how it is resolving the DNS:
It will expand and resolv the recipe string as it will normally do but showing the steps from each macro involved
I found the following book very helpful to understand how sendmail works:
http://www.diablotin.com/librairie/n...il/ch31_10.htm
adn the DNS stuff in:
http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/networ...il/ch21_02.htm

Now, the problem I found is that when I send a mail to user [at] mydomain.com it tries to deliver to mydomain.com instead of the MX record which points to mail.mydomain.com I think it's the DNS setup which unfortunately is in another host so I cannot mess with that

I don't know if something similar is happening to you.

HTH

After reading the maillog output again I see that the relay option is pita.com.com. Which concludes to me that spatior has some point with the dns settings. I can't check them from outside. Dont get a MX only massive NS records.

A short search for the $w macro states that it only gets assign on version 8. Not prior to this. dunno if your other machine have another version. Doubt it if all of them are slack 14.

Thanks for the input -- here's the output of
This is identical to the output of both my servers and my work station (all of them are Slackware 14.0, the servers are 32-bit, the work station (and this laptop) are 64-bit and all four sedmails are un-fooled-around-with -- the laptop is the only one that is exhibiting this pita.com.com behavior (drat!).

All my machines are fixed-IP, with identical /etc/hosts files; i.e.,
So, I don't think DNS has anything to do with (and BIND is not configured nor is it running on any server); my /etc/resolv.conf (a little messy) contains:
Those commented-out extras are there for the rare occasion that the first two aren't available for some reason or other; they're just-in-case. And, as I understand it, the first place we look is in /etc/hosts and, well, they're all there.

I'm not doing mailx trona@pita.com (which goes out to the world), I simply use mailx trona, which should be resolved (and is on every box but this one) to the local machine. And it ain't.

WFT.

Thanks for the input.

Dunno if the output looks good. But I think that sendmail does not use your FQDN so it puts your domain (search in /etc/resolv.conf) at the end of the hostname. Coming from a little howto /etc/mail/genericsdomain should hold your FQDN. Do you have that one? What does it shown on (all) the machine(s)?

Nother thing. How did you configure your sendmail?

Have you updated the sendmail.cf or sendmail.mc file?

http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/sendma...ions-from.html
http://www.electrictoolbox.com/artic...ction-refused/

Actually, I never configure any of the sendmail files; the norm is that it "just works" on the individual server and with a mailto link from an internal web page. No kidding, I don't configure anything on any of these boxes.

So, maybe I'll look at the configuration files and see what's what but dang if I can figure out where this additional .com is coming from given that all four machines are identical Slackware 14.0 installations (other than 32-bit versus 64-bit) with all patches applied.

Tiz a puzzlement.

Hm that truly is weired. Maybe some packages did fiddle with your hosts config file or sendmail. Maybe a diff on the packages might show.
Also 32vs64 does not make a difference. But the one giving headache is the only 64bit?

Yeah, I know that 32-bit and 64-bit are pretty much identical -- the one being a pain happens to be a 64-bit lap top (which is identical to a 64-bit desk top). There's not enough on it to make a difference (so I can just scrap it and reload Slackware and see what happens).

I mean I haven't got a clue -- never seen this before and these guys are kept identical with configuration files and patches, including the recent kernel patch on all. The two 32-bit data base servers have old Radeon cards but the 64-bit boxes have Intel graphics (and how that could make any difference I most certainly do not know).

I think I'll just do a clean install and see what that does (if anything) to make a difference. It's just goofy.

Hm. Does slackware has some options for labtop installs? I know in Debian theres an option for that. Also its more for energy saving and alike but maybe theres a silent com(on) give me more power. Just kidding. Long time ago I lost track of slack.

Maybe you can just copy the files of the desktop over to the labtop? At least that rules out any configurations. Also you would need to just host.conf and alike. Grub if installed also if you dont use the same uuid for the partitions.
Could you backup the /etc directory and diff it after the installation? Maybe this will shed some light.

Why are you posting here?

Nope, no special stuff for a lap top; install and go. There are settings for power management and the like (in Xfce, KDE), but nothing special about a lap top versus a desk top or server or blade or whatever. Partitioning is done ahead of time with cfdisk or fdisk (for those that love to type), nothing special (and all my machines are partitioned pretty much identically, although some are mounts of drives other than /sdax). What I will do is diff /etc from one to the other (which are identical in any event -- I use fixed-IP addressing and all systems are listed in every /etc/hosts. The one difference will be /etc/rc.d/rc.init1.conf where the local machine is set; lilo.conf is identical, everybody boots from /sda1.

Really goofy, this condition. Don't have a clue (yet).

Thanks for the input.

While it should "just work", for some reason it isn't. You might be able to work around it by specifying your relay in sendmail.cf, though:

It might be related to this:

Here, I get these results:

Perhaps things would go better if your machine's full hostname wasn't just the domain name.

Cause I want to help. Also despite me knowledge of sendmail.

There's nobody in the Debian universe that needs help?

I work with RedHat as part of the Day Job(TM) but I feel no need to tool over to that forum to offer my advice about, well, anything. That's mainly because my advice would be almost invariably wrong due to my shallow knowledge of how things work in that Linux distribution.

Might be that I like to learn some more. Or see how slackware developed or just cause i like to piss of people. And also cause somethings are common to all linux derivates like hostname or domainnames.

Thanks for that; what I get is
I tried editing /etc/sendmail.cf:
which was NULL (as are all my systems).

By the way, this does look like I think it should:
but I'm not positive about that.

So, logged in as root,
Looking at your post, where the box is slackware.lan looks like a good idea -- I've just used .com since forever (even though there are actual web sites with the names I use) simply... because. Think I'll change 'em to .lan.

One other thing, that I don't think has anything to do with anything, is that my only Internet access is via HughesNet; there's no wireless, no DSL, no cable, no fiber optic -- dial-up or HugesNet, that's it. HughesNet does not issue fixed-IP addresses and the interface does not allow the outside world to come in. The guy is coming this afternoon to install the G4 upgrade (which will take me from 150K-300K to 10Mbs, which is roughly 12.5MB, which is a heckuva lot faster, but still no outside access). I do all mail with gmail.com.

Also, as far as I can tell, my FQDN is simply .com? And, SSH between all systems works just fine (so the /etc/hosts entries appear to be "in charge" and there's no DNS involved?

So, I'm thinking reinstall 14.0, apply the patches and see what's what. I can't think of anything else to do.

Thanks for the input.

A FQDN is hostname [dot] tld [dot]. The dot at the end is important. At least according to the RFC's. Also most installers are happy with just the hostname[dot]tld.
Coming from my question for hostname -f your FQDN is "pita.com". The manpage of hostname has some explanations and caveats how hostname returns the fqdn. See that for more info.

As I said I'm not so deep into sendmail so i best get out of the way and let the known sort that.

Could you try to enter this into your /etc/hosts file?

127.0.0.1 pita pita.com.

Then restart the network service:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart

Uh, nope, don't think so, that's the address of localhost (not to be fiddled with, methinks).

Thanks, though.

I think the fix might be to use a hostname like somehost.pita.lan, where the hostname will be seen as "somehost" and the domain name as "pita.lan". I've never deployed a machine that had only a domain name (or a domain name of just .com). With slackware.com, for example, the actual machine has a longer hostname (connie.slackware.com) and reaching it via "slackware.com" is done with a CNAME in DNS. I think that might be what is confusing sendmail, since here it works out of the box on hive64.slackware.lan.

Sorry, that should be:

127.0.0.1 localhost
192.168.1.30 pita pita.com.

After installing a minimal slackware 14 system with your hostname (pita) and domainname (com) I could send mail with mail -s "This is a testmail" trona after adding the user. Which got delivered and sits inside the mailbox now.

What differs in my log line from your log line that sendmail uses the local mailer and not the esmtp. relay is 127.0.0.1 which sounds okay.
I'll attach some config files HTH

and an empty post for another two files

Every day I learn how ignorant I can be. I've always just given a box a name, address and domain, made an entry in /etc/hosts and got on with it (they all talk to each other with SSH and life is good). Looks like it's time for a change and I'd really appreciate it if you could suggest a source for setting it up.

My little LAN can limp along as is but I've got a bigger system to do (I was in the Navy, ours, and learned the basic lesson about never volunteering, think I'd know better): couple of severs, five or more existing PC's, LAN connections for data entry and analysis, non-profit institute, lots of data, lots of volunteer users, long-term (like years if not decades and I will not live to see the end). Gotta do it right and it looks to me like what you're doing is the right approach -- I've just never done it and figure if I get my act together that I can repeat that, just need a little push in the right direction so I can figure out how to do it (as in: is there a how-to that I haven't been able to find yet?).

The original problem with sendmail I think has been eclipsed -- I am going to do a reinstall and step-by-step apply the patches (including the kernel) and see if I can find where it breaks. But, that may be moot if I can configure that box (and the rest of mine) as you suggest. I'm using that box to install and configure DSpace (not the simplest thing to put in what with the required software). I have looked at everything I can find that has anything to do with networking and sendmail and all of it has been untouched by patches or software installation as far as I can tell (the date stamps are distribution, diff doesn't show anything) but who knows what evil lurks here and there.

I really appreciate your input and thank you for taking the time and trouble.

Thomas

OK, enough fooling around -- I did a clean reinstall of Slackware64 14.0 then did testing of sendmail:

• I named the box pita.lan;
• Set up my account;
• Sent mail from root to me, worked fine;
• Installed all stable patches (except the kernel patches);
• Sent mail from root to me and vice versa, worked fine, no runs, no drips, no errors;
• Upgraded to ksh93-2012_08_01-x86_64-1, did sendmail in both directions, worked fine (had to check just to see).

Going to upgrade the kernel and see what's what with that (if anything).

OK, upgraded to Kernel-3.2.45 (this box has Intel graphics), ran the sendmail tests in both directions, works fine.

Maybe it was the pita.com that was causing the problem (although my three other Slackware 14.0 boxes that are identical to this one worked fine to being with) but, whatever, the blasted thing is working fine so I'm going to mark this one solved.

I'm also going to change all the others to sname.lan and see how that goes -- just sounds like a good idea. None of these guys have service from the outside world (HughesNet just don't want ya doin' that!) and I don't have a registered domain name and I'm hoping that changed from .com to .lan will eliminate whatever glitch there might be.

Unless somebody's got a better idea about how to configure my LAN...

Thanks to all for the help.

The only good advice I can give you on this is to try to create a new thread dedicated to that problem :).

BTW, I'm curious too.

Cheers

Garry.

You can use this article as input:

http://computechtips.com/295/slackware-linux-pc-router