gnu mailutils and exim

[Shawn Lamson <shawn.lamson@verizon.net>]

Hi -

I am having a configuration issue with ( I think) mailtutils and exim...
 The documentation on mailutils seems spotty. 
Problem:  when sending mail from commandline with slamson:~$ mail -s
"test" shawn.lamson@verizon.net
the mail gets declined b/c my computer's hostname is not known... I am a
trusted mail user on my machine and can do the following
slamson~:$ echo "this is a test" | /usr/sbin/exim -f
"shawn.lamson@verizon.net" shawn.lamson@verizon.net
to fool the ISP that the mail is coming from it's own domain (or I can
use other domains like xyz@yahoo.com and it still works...
I can also carefully compose the mail according to RFC specs so that it
is more normal looking (subject, Reply-To, and other proper headers)...
BUT - all I want is a simple way to specify a "From" address such that
my ISP will receive my mail from user slamson send from "mail"
commandline.
Anyone familiar with this - even pointing me to the right documentation
will be fine (please not mailutils docs - I didnt get anywhere with them
and found conflicting versions on gnu's own pages).

TIA,

Shawn


-- 
Shawn Lamson
shawn.lamson@verizon.net
Debian GNU/Linux 3.0