Transient parse error -- message queued for future delivery

[Laurence Beard]

Hi All,

I am rather inexperienced with sendmail. Over the last few days mail delivery has been failing with the above error message, that is, mailq. My guess is it cannot contact the mail server. What is the best approach to resolve this problem ?

Thanks

[Mihai Lazar]

Hi

Take a look at this document:

http://www1.itrc.hp.com/service/cki/docDisplay.do?docLocale=en_US&admit=-682735245+1124721997266+28353475&docId=200000062922179

[RAC_1]

What does mailq -v -d say?

[Mel Burslan]

This error usually is seen when there are problems with either your smart relay server or the destination mail host depending on your configuration. Check your mail queue with

mailq

command in a few minutes or an hour or so. If you still see the same messages queued up and pending for delivery, talk to the admins of the smart relay server if you have one

Hint:
grep ^DS /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
gives you the name of the smart relay server, which is followed immediately after DS direrective on the same line

if you are not using a smart relay server, you have a connectivity problem to the recipient's mail host, which may be a result of a down server on the other end or a network related problem, which would not surprise me as many network admins are locking down email deliver in this day in the proliferation of virii age.

[Jozef Novak]

Check also whether the relay is resolvable by the name service (/etc/hosts or DNS)

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Tranient errors mean that either the DNS lookup failed, the relay server refused to accept the mail or the destination mail server refused to accept the mail.

This problem is not always originating from the sending server.

SEP