Re: mail confusion
paul <paul.walton@dial.pipex.com> writes:
[snip]
> OK. At least I feel I`m doing something constructive now.
> Firstly dpkg -l | grep "mail transport" tells me:
>
> FUDO2:/home/guest# dpkg -l | grep "mail transport"
> ii sendmail 8.9.3-20 A powerful mail transport agent.
>
> which is as I expected because I deliberately installed sendmail,
> replacing exim, because it was needed by the "Fidogate" program
> which was what started all this off.
>
> If I now restart sendmail - "/etc/init.d/sendmail start" I get a
> load of output along these lines:
>
> Starting mail transport agent: <zero: /var/spool/mqueue/qfHAA03748> <zero:
> /var/spool/mqueue/qfHAA28888> <zero: /var/spool/mqueue/qfHAA28889> <zero:
[snip]
> /var/spool/mqueue/DfXAA26514> sendmail.
Looks to me like you have a lot of junk in your mail queue. If your
MTA isn't working properly that's not unusual.
> I have absolutely no idea what this means.
> telnet localhost 25 still says:
>
> FUDO2:/home/guest# telnet localhost 25
> Trying 127.0.0.1...
> Connected to dial.pipex.com.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> mail... Recipient names must be specified
I don't think this is right. I don't have a Debian machine runing
sendmail but our Solaris server is. Here's what I get when I telnet to
the smtp port on it:
% telnet mailserver 25
220 Custom ESMTP Sendmail Version (CSUSP); Mon, 24 Jan 2000 09:01:43 -0700 (MST)
and then it just waits for input. This is the behavior of every MTA I
have ever used. Never seen anything like what you're getting.
> I hope this gives some clues as to the problem. I`m still sure I must have
> misconfigured it somehow but I`ve read all I can and tried several different
> configurations, all with these same results.
Maybe. Check in /etc/inetd.conf and see what is listed for the smtp
service. On my Debian box it looks like:
smtp stream tcp nowait mail /usr/sbin/exim exim -bs
Of course it's possible you're not running sendmail via inetd, but as
a standalone daemon. If that's the case you'll have to tell us how
it's started by a script in /etc/init.d (script name will probably be
sendmail) at boot time.
If it is running on it's own as a daemon the script to start it should
contain a line similiar to:
sendmail -bd -q15m
I'm not sure what the line in inetd.conf should be if you're running
it via inetd. Someone with more sendmail experience care to share?
Also, it should NOT be started in both places, eg., via a script in
/etc/init.d and from a line in inetd.conf.
Gary
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