Solaris

Hello:

I am trying to send unix mail, from command line, to an external e-mail address. When I do a mailx -s 'Subject' me@me.com, it appears to send fine. However, I never receive the e-mail. I contacted network security to see if maybe a firewall somewhere was blocking the e-mail, but so far have had no luck.

Is there a way to tell mailx to use a specific interface? Say, for example, qe0 instead of le0? I did a man mailx, but have had no luck.

A similar example would be traceroute -i qe0 123.123.123.234...I was wondering if you could do something similar with mailx.

Thanks.

-cd

Sounds more like a configuration issue with sendmail.
You probably need to specify a relay in sendmail. Ask your mail admnistrator what mail server you can use as a relay, put it sendmail.cf (look for Smart Relay in sendmail.cf) and restart sendmail.

Now, this may or may not work, depending on how you first configured sendmail, but it's a start.
You may want to check if you have not gotten any mail in your mailbox, or check your mail logs. If your e-mail is being rejected, you should get some feedback.

check your /etc/hosts file for the mailhost entry

make sure from your box you are able to ping to the mailhost

or use the telnet port 25 command to test.

on the problem server try to telnet mailhost 25

like so

root@webby # telnet mailhost 25
Trying 172.42.203.252...
Connected to aquarius.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 aquarius.mydomain.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8; Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:10
:28

mail from: sparcguy@mydomain.com <<------------------------ you type anything@anything.com is fine
250 sparcguy@mydomain.com... Sender ok
rcpt to: sparcguy@mydomain.com <<<------------------------ you must type a real email address
250 sparcguy@mydomain.com... Recipient ok
data <<< --------------------------------------------------- you type this
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
test test <<< --------------------------------------------------------- you type these
. <<< -------------------------------------------------------- you type this
250 LAA29397 Message accepted for delivery
quit <<< -------------------------------------------------- you type this
221 aquarius.mydomain.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.
root@webby #
250 LAA29397 Message accepted for delivery

if you cannot see this part

Connected to aquarius.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 aquarius.mydomain.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8; Fri, 15 Dec 2006 11:10
:28


or you see dark blank screen, means either network routing problem, if you get immediate "connect close" after issuing telnet mailhost 25 it probably means remote mailhost smtp port 25 is blocked by maybe a firewall in between, or smtp services like sendmail on remote server not started.

I followed your example to the tee, and everything looked totally normal. In fact, the e-mail actually arrived at the destination. Why, then, can I not just simply do a mailx from the unix box??

Can I change some sort of config file to tell smtp to use port 25, as opposed to whatever port it is currently using??

If not, is rmail an option? Could I tell rmail to use port 25??

might be some routing problems.

do this command on the server having the problem.

banner test > /tmp/xx

/usr/lib/sendmail -v sparcguy@mydomain.com < /tmp/xx

cut and paste the entire output here