Output to stdout after installing new sendmail binaries

[Gerald Miller_1]

I just installed the new sendmail binaries on all of our systems yesterday, and I have been receving output to standard output ever since.

Here is an example of the output:
# Mar 6 14:16:31 zeus sendmail[17885]: OAA17885: to=, delay=00:00:01, mailer=esmtp, relay=asearches.com, stat=Transient parse error -- message queued for future delivery

These pop up at seemingly random intervals, no matter what you are doing at the time.

Is there anyway to surpress this output (or send these to the mail.log, where they belong)?

I am having this problem across a variety of platforms (all of them running HP-UX 11.00), ranging from D-Classes to A-Classes.

Thanks!

[John Poff]

Hi,

There was a similar problem reported in a thread yesterday:


http://forums.itrc.hp.com/cm/QuestionAnswer/1,,0xf4649c196a4bd71190080090279cd0f9,00.html


JP

[Gerald Miller_1]

John,
Thanks for your help. Somehow through my searches, I missed that message.

I checked for a nsswitch.conf file on each box, and found it on some, but not all. I have this problem even on servers that do have this file.

I do see a commonality between these messages, though. The domain on each does not resolve. I decided to test by sending email to a host not on our network and one I know exists (ie., my linuxmail.org account). It worked.

I don't have any idea why it is printing these messages to the screen. Any other suggestions.

[Berlene Herren]

I just fixed one like that...well, it wasn't really a fix but a workaround. I did a "killsm" then started sendmail with

#/usr/sbin/sendmail -bd -q30.

Try that.

Berlene

[Gerald Miller_1]

Berlene,
Currently, sendmail starts as follows:

/sbin/init.d/sendmail -bd -q30m

Which is about the same thing as you mentioned. I call HP today, and spoke with an engineer that believes he has a command than can make sendmail not output these errors to the console.

If it works, I'll post it here for future reference.

[Volker Borowski · Accepted solution]

Gerald,

it might be that the new version uses a message type for this message that is directed to the console via the syslog configuration.

Check your syslog.conf file for mail-configuration entries and redirect them or switch them off.

Hope this helps
Volker

[Gerald Miller_1]

Volker,
That was the problem. I contacted HP support a few days ago and they showed me that file.

I quickly saw the problem:

*.alert was pointing to root, which means all alerts are sent to root.

I added ;mail.none to this line:

*.alert;mail.none root

This made the mail errors stop showing up at the terminal.

[Berlene Herren]

Thanks, Gerald for posting the fix!

Berlene

[Aziz Zouagui]

You also need to add the same to the line /dev/console.

*.alert;mail.none /dev/console
*.alert;mail.none root