[NTLUG:Discuss] basic sendmail question/help

[cbbrowne@godel.brownes.org]

On Sat, 11 Sep 1999 18:30:50 PDT, the world broke into rejoicing as
"m m" <llliiilll at hotmail.com>  said:
> >From: MadHat <madhat at unspecific.com>
> >Reply-To: discuss at ntlug.org
> 
> >
> >first, I would make sure you are checking the mail on both machines.
> >Alias root (in /etc/aliases) to an account you check regularly, that way
> >when something bounces you get the notice and you can work from those
> >cluse (you may have already done this, I am just thinking outloud).
> >
> >How are you trying to test this?  Are you sending something via sendmail
> >command line or through a client?
> 
> Do you mean
> command line like this:
> aaa>mail xxx at bbb.my.com
> subject: ...
> and through a client like using elm or pine?
> I did try both ways. none of then works.

No, those are all clients, however simple.

Sending *directly* via sendmail might happen via:

/usr/lib/sendmail < message

or perhaps via connecting to the port via
	telnet localhost 25
and then tell the SMTP server what needs to be sent via the SMTP
protocol.

Largely an aside: various mail servers provide /usr/lib/sendmail;
I just today got Postfix installed and working on a couple of hosts,
which proved remarkably painless.

I've used Sendmail and qmail successfully in the past; Sendmail
being not too hard to get running because only trivial "fiddling"
with config was required.  

qmail has the merits that it doesn't have the scary "line noise" config
that Sendmail does.  It also has the Cool Mailbox Scheme called Maildir
that obviates common locking problems by having messages go into their
own files that are staged in appropriate directories and moved to other
directories as processing takes place.  This has the merit that it doesn't
require that you have some likely-to-be-non-portable-and-buggy locking
scheme that might not work across NFS...

Unfortunately, configuring qmail was "rather more of a challenge," and
I'm not sure I can commend it for general use until Russell Nelson gets
done writing his book on it.

I never had success configuring smail or exim even though they're reputed
to be pretty good...

Postfix seems well-architected, and it looks like it's now got a
reasonably acceptable license for general use.

> >Have you seen any bounced messages?
>
> I did see bounced message. (I assume bounced message is the mail message 
> sent by mail deamon, which include the orginal message, right?)

Urk.  Behaviour on bounce varies quite a bit.

> >Check your mail que with 'mailq' and see if there are any messages there 
> >and what the messages are.  If you try to send it via command line, you may 
> >get an idea of why it isn't working (maybe).  If you aren't sure what I 
> >mean, let me know.
> >
> yep. there are messages (mails) there which are I tried to send.
> the follow is what I got from mailq from A box. as you can see here, I try 
> send mail from root and user xxx at A box to user yyy at B box.
> the first three message sent from command line ( > mail yyy at bbb...)
> the rest of then from pine. similar result from B box.
> 
> root at aaa /root]# mailq
> 		Mail Queue (8 requests)
> --Q-ID-- --Size-- -----Q-Time----- -----------Sender/Recipient------------
> OAA00896       20 Sat Sep 11 14:34 root
>                  (host map: lookup (bbb.my.com): deferred)
> 				   yyy at bbb.my.com
> OAA00924       30 Sat Sep 11 14:42 root
>                  (host map: lookup (bbb.my.com): deferred)
> 				   yyy at bbb.my.com
> OAA00926       21 Sat Sep 11 14:43 root
>                  (host map: lookup (bbb.my.com): deferred)
> 				   yyy at bbb.my.com
> NAA00780       17 Thu Sep  9 13:22 <xxx at aaa.my.com>
>                  (Warning: could not send message for past 4 hours)
> 				   <yyy at bbb.my.com>
> MAA00797       17 Thu Sep  9 12:59 <xxx at aaa.my.com>
>                  (Warning: could not send message for past 4 hours)
> 				   <yyy at bbb.my.com>
> MAB00777       18 Thu Sep  9 12:54 <root at aaa.my.com>
>                  (Warning: could not send message for past 4 hours)
> 				   <yyy at bbb.my.com>
> MAA00777       17 Thu Sep  9 12:44 <root at aaa.my.com>
>                  (Warning: could not send message for past 4 hours)
> 				   <yyy at bbb.my.com>
> PAA00818      260 Mon Sep  6 15:52 <root at aaa.my.com>
>                  (host map: lookup (bbb.my.com): deferred)
> 				   <yyy at bbb.my.com>
> 
> >Ummmm......  I will keep thinking about it.
> 
> Thank you for your help.

You probably want to watch your mail log at the time that transmission
is attempted as that will give you the best information on what the
MTA was trying to do.

Commonly in /var/log/maillog (Red Hat) or /var/log/mail.log (Debian).

Try sending one message, and have a virtual console looking at the log
file via (say)
   tail -f /var/log/maillog

You'll see some information on how the MTA was trying to route it, and
the three or four lines of log info that comes from that is exactly
what you need to use for diagnosis or to pass on in hopes that one of
us may recognize the condition.
--
Now is a good time to spend a year dead for tax purposes.
cbbrowne at hex.net- <http://www.ntlug.org/~cbbrowne/lsf.html>