[NTLUG:Discuss] basic sendmail question/help

[Greg E]

I've just gotten done doing the sendmail battle myself.

I set my systems up to service a single mail station by using NFS to mount
"/var/spool/mail" on all of my workstations, I actually use autofs.  By doing
this I only need to run sendmail as a deamon on 1 system.  All other systems 
run sendmail as a user process to service the client program (elm, pine, CDE
mail, etc.)

In "/etc/sendmail.cw" I list all of my workstations that can send or recieve
mail.  One per line and don't forget to include your external domain name
without a host (ie nas-inet.com) since mail comming in will only have a domain
name and not a workstation.  This is only done on the machine that runs as
your mail server.  Adding localhost is not necessary as it's a default setting
in the default sendmail.cf file.  The book says that if your running DNS then
only hosts not named in DNS need to be included in sendmail.cw.

In "/etc/sendmail.cf" on all of your non server machines you need to indicate
where mail that is no recognized should be sent.  I don't remember the exact
code but I can check (I think it's DR) tonight.  It will be grouped with the
DM and DE codes IIRC.

To test sendmail and see what it's doing "sendmail -v -t" is the command line.
This gives you line input w/o prompts so enter "To: <addr><CR>", "From: <user>
<CR>", "Subject: <text><CR>", "<text><CR><text><^D>".  Several lines of 
messages will appear while sendmail is talking to the server.  You can also do
a "tail -f /var/log/maillog" (RH) on your server to see what it's upto.


Greg E

m m wrote:
> 
> Hi MadHat:
> 
> > > I think after installing the Linux (RH6.0), almost basic settings was
> > > done/configurated automatically. since the sendmail.cf also been
> >generated,
> > > I just ignore the m4 part, think edit sendmail.cf will do
> > > basic work. am i wrong?
> >
> >No, you are not wrong.
> 
> But, why it does not work so far? I have tried different combination
> on setting this sendmail configuration. (kind of try-and-error)
> 
> >The main part that I see right now is the cw lines.  I usually use the
> >/etc/sendmail.cw file, but if you choose not to, have each one on its
> >own line like:
> >
> >Cwlocalhost
> >Cwaaa.my.domain
> 
> These two lines should in /etc/sendmail.cf or /etc/sendmal.cw?
> 
> Actually I put aaa.my.com in sendmail.cw on A box and
> bbb.my.com in sendmail.cw on B box (without Cw prefix),
> keep the sendmail.cf as the orginal (just like never edit them after
> installation), it does not work. :(
> 
> I need help, really!
> 
> jc
>