UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi again everyone.

I have recently installed Solaris 10 on a server. Everything seems to work fine (users can be added and can log in, internet connectivity works, etc). However I'm struggling to get mail or mailx to work.

Say there are two users on my server, Bob and Mary. Server hostname is, say, Solar10. When Bob is logged in, he should be able to type "mail Mary", then text, then Ctrl+D, and the message should be send (or, alternatively, type mailx Mary, then subject, then body, then Ctrl+D).

Well, everything seems to work except for the actual mail part.

When using "mail", Bob can type the command "mail Mary", then start typing the body. However, when pressing Ctrl+D, it just enters the ^D sequence but does not actually send the message or terminate the typing session. Bob can still press enter and go to a new mail line, as if he didn't press Ctrl+D. This continues until Bob just presses Ctrl+C which breaks out of mail without sending it.

With "mailx", it's different, but doesn't work either. Bob can type "mailx Mary", then subject, then body, then Ctrl+D. This time, Ctrl+D results in console output "EOT" and returns to shell. So it would seem fine, right? Except that Mary never got the message. Typing either "mail" or "mailx" from Mary's console results in "No Mail" message.

I tried sending from Bob to "Mary", to "Mary@Solar10", or even to my real email address, and nothing works.

Maybe there's something I need to configure? I didn't touch any mail config settings after installing Solaris 10, and I didn't find any guides online that would instruct me how and if it is required.

I did not install any custom software like the Pine suite. All I'm using is the default tools provided with a full Solaris 10 install. The man pages do show up, however, for both mail and mailx.

Thanks for your help.

Have you trapped <ctrl>D in the .profile, or changed its meaning?

Did not, as as I said it seems to work in the mailx example.

You have to enabel sendmail here is how you do that
#svcadm enable sendmail
confirm if it is working
#svcs | grep sendmail