Sendmail

[sepia]

Never had problems with this on PB, but I've got the final now and it's really frustrating me.

Sendmail won't start. It keeps telling me that /etc/mail/local-host-names is in a group writable directory. Changing the permissions doesn't do a thing.

This question has been posted before, but with no good response. Any ideas?

[ChrisL]

Its the root ( / ) directory that is group writable. You can change it to mode 755 and fix the problem with:

chmod 755 /

(as root). But You'll need to be root to add directories or create files now (not just admin priviledges.

Another option would be to add the conf DONT_BLAME_SENDMAIL to your m4 config file.

I myself am trying to figure out why it won't receive mail.

[gdif]

It's not working because it's sleeping. Check your /var/log/mail.log and you'll see entries like this:

Mar 24 19:52:15 localhost sendmail[1700]: My unqualified host name (localhost) unknown; sleeping for retry
Mar 24 20:01:00 localhost sendmail[1741]: My unqualified host name (localhost) unknown; sleeping for retry
Mar 24 20:03:23 localhost sendmail[1749]: My unqualified host name (localhost) unknown; sleeping for retry
Mar 24 20:13:35 localhost sendmail[1772]: My unqualified host name (localhost) unknown; sleeping for retry


Damned if I can figure out how to fix it though. Nothing I've done seems to work.

--gdif

[sepia]

Yes, I got sendmail to start listening by chmod'ing the root directory. (Figured it out shortly after posting my first message.)

Now it won't recognize emails to users. (User unknown error.) I've got the domain in my local-host-names file. I'll try the relay-domains file now, but that seems wrong...

[gdif]

Well, I did the chmod, that fixed that problem. Found where to put the domain name (/etc/hostconfig) but now any mail I try to send gets "no route to host" errors generated in mail.log.

What's odd about that is that the error has the domain name and the ip address of the host, but then it says it can't get there.

Thoughts?

--gdif

[stovak]

I had this SENDMAIL problem with the pubic beta. Occasionally I would send an email and for some reason, Sendmail would have problem looking up localhost. I never solved it, but I noticed I didn't have it after I started doing my own DNS locally. Getting named running on the machine seemd to satisfy this error.

[ChrisL]

Solved a number of problems, although perhaps non-conventionally.

First things first, /etc/mail/local-host-names _has to_ contain the domain(s)/host(s) for which you are receiving mail.

Next, although not entirely necessary, sendmail complains a lot less and starts up faster if your hostname is set. You can set it manually with "hostname your.hostname.here.com", or perhaps in /etc/hostconfig under the "HOSTNAME=" line. I haven't rebooted yet to verify this, but from the /System/Library/Startup/Network script seems to verify this. It'll sleep and retry if you don't, but eventually it'll startup for queing.

After a few frustrating hours trying to figure out why "mail.local" didn't have the correct permissions to write to /var/mail, I got it to work by making it setuid root (ie: chmod u+s /usr/sbin/mail.local). Now, this probably isn't the greatest idea, but it did deliver mail. I recompiled the latest sendmail (8.11.3) just to be sure that it wasn't an Apple problem, and the same thing is required for that build. It talks about some different compile options for SYS V based Unixes, but BSD is not, so I would think they don't apply.

A more desirable solution for me was to compile and install procmail (www.procmail.org) and enable it as the local mail delivery agent in the sendmail.cf file. For my installation, the following config options in the .m4 file did the trick:

define(`PROCMAIL_MAILER_PATH', `/usr/bin/procmail')
FEATURE(local_procmail)

Or, alternatively, you can edit the Mlocal file in /etc/mail/sendmail.cf similar to the following:

Mlocal, P=/usr/bin/procmail, F=lsDFMAw5:/|@qSPfhn9, S=EnvFromL/HdrFromL, R=EnvToL/HdrToL,
A=procmail -Y -a $h -d $u

Hope this saves some time for some people.

[Zim]

First question... is the definitive test that one can telnet to port 25?
(using 127.0.0.1)? ie. if your ISP blocks incoming port 25, will that be a local loopback before it can get blocked? (I'm assuming yes).

Ok, what I have tried so far from tips I have seen....

- I have done a chmod 755 on /
- I have changed /etc/hostconfig to read
hostconfig:MAILSERVER=-YES-
- I have done a chmod 755 on /private/etc (this cleared up a LOT
of msgs in /var/logs/mail.log)

my permissions....

top level: drwxr-xr-x 30 root admin 976 Apr 3 09:37 .

lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 Apr 3 09:37 etc -> private/etc
drwxr-xr-x 7 root wheel 264 Apr 3 09:38 private

in private:
drwxr-xr-x 70 root wheel 2336 Apr 2 20:17 etc


At this point my /var/logs/mail.log has

Apr 3 09:46:11 localhost sendmail[225]: My unqualified host name (localhost) unknown; sleeping for retry

Now I do have a dyndns acct, or should I use my Roadrunner, but then that really doesn't have a hostname, does it? Exactly what does sendmail need the hostname for?

What I'm trying to accomplish.... I'm a dinosaur, I admit it. I am thrilled to finally have unix on my Mac. I love both the cli and the gui. finally they are unified.

I'm trying to consolidate my mail accts. One thing I value tho is being to get to mail mail from virtually anywhere any time. Also I want to consolidate mail from several accts I have.

So I want to run fetchmail to grab my mail from various points and it passes mail off to sendmail (hence my need for sendmail as a delivery agent?) into /var/mail/$USER. From there I will use elm (told you I'm a dinosaur), which I finally got to compile. Its important to me NOT to need a gui. Yes I'm sure there are plenty of GUI mail programs that can fetch from multiple accts, but I want something simple.

Anyway, I cannot telnet to 25 yet (host refused connection), and a ps-auxww shows no sendmail process running.

Using procmail as the MTA for fetchmail is another option I suppose, but I'd like to at least understand how to get sendmail working and go from there.

Thanks for any help,
Mike