UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

hi, Gurus,

I need some help with sending mail out from my UNIX server:
It is running Solaris 2.6 and the sendmail version is 8.8.
Output of :/usr/lib/sendmail -d0.1 -bt < /dev/null

Version 8.8.8+Sun
Compiled with: LOG MATCHGECOS MIME7TO8 MIME8TO7 NAMED_BIND NDBM NETINET
NETUNIX NIS NISPLUS QUEUE SCANF SMTP XDEBUG

============ SYSTEM IDENTITY (after readcf) ============
(short domain name) $w = my_server
(canonical domain name) $j = my_server.my_companydomain.com
(subdomain name) $m = my_companydomain.com
(node name) $k = my_server

ADDRESS TEST MODE (ruleset 3 NOT automatically invoked)
Enter <ruleset> <address>

When I ran "mailx/mail" , it gave me " User Unknown" error and save my message into a dead.letter. Can somebody tell me what do I need to change in my sendmail.cf file? My only purpose is trying to send file in this server to somebody in my company's e-mail account.

Message from syslog:

Nov 19 13:48:07 my_server sendmail[9885]: NAA09885: to=somebody@my_company.com, delay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, stat=queued


Thanks!

Check your /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file for the following:

# who I send unqualified names to (null means deliver locally)
DR

# who I masquerade as (null for no masquerading) (see also $=M)
DM

If there are no entries here, it may be that the user you attempted to send to is not in the /etc/passwd file and it did not know where to send this to thus it gives an error. Since you are sending to your domain (someuser@my_company.com) and if those fields are blank, then it did not know where to send the email to. So it checks /etc/passwd for the username. If it's not there, it can then check /etc/mail/aliases for an alias for the user name

somuser: someuser@otherserver.my_company.com

If there isn't an alias, it won't send.

At some point there has to be a mail server that knows about all the users. My environment had an Exchange server so all email not specifically for the internet (someone@not_my_domain.com) or not specifically for a local user or aliases ( allunixadmins: joe, tom, charlie, scott) would go to the Exchange server. If your Sendmail server will be the main mail hub, then all users must be listed in /etc/passwd or have an alias set up in /etc/mail/aliases.

You need to check out the FAQ at Sendmail and/or read the Sendmail book to figure out how you want to move mail around. Once you figure that out, more specific help can be given.

(corrected by RTM ,thanks!)

You can use sendmail to test sending mail:

Code:

sendmail -v  user@hostname < testfile

Run the command above from the command line with the right values for the email address and testfile.... then post the results and it should be easy to see what is the problem.

A mail user agent is for reading, replying, disposing, and composing an email. If you move /usr/lib/sendmail to /usr/lib/oldsendmail on a Solaris system and insure it's not running on the server (ps -ef|grep mail), then when you go to send an email with mailx you will get an error (even on a local user within the same system).

# mailx -s"test" unixops < /etc/issue
/usr/lib/sendmail: No such file or directory


Sendmail does not have to be running (that is when it is allowing incoming mail to the local server) but must be present (or some other MTA) for sending email.

On HP-UX, moving sendmail does nothing to sending to local users but will stop you from sending out from that server to another.

does sendmail checks the emails which it sends and if so where?

RTM,


Your are right. I tested it the other day and found that when I tested it I had moved the symbolic link to /usr/sbin/sendmail and not the actual sendmail program.

When I moved the program, I got the same result as you.

I will go back to my server and move sendmail back to it's homely place now

I greatly appreciate you correcting my error..... I thought I had checked it but actually moved the symlink and not the actual sendmail program