Sendmail - "MAIL From:<" resolution

[Robin King_1]

I've got a problem on one of my boxes with sendmail. When trying to send mail via our mail server, the mail bounces back.

I've traced the problem to a syntax error in the sending address. A sendmail -v shows the problem is related to:

MAIL From:

For some reason it's adding .# to the end of the domain name.

Question is, where does sendmail resolve this MAIL From address?

Cheers

[Rita C Workman]

Have you checked your /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file for a possible typo??

Just a quick thought,
Rita

[Michael Steele_2]

A) /etc/mail/sendmail.cw contains the hostname and the fully-qualified hostname for the system. For example, the system dog in the domain cup.hp.com has the following entries in the file:

dog
dog.cup.hp.com

Does the # appear here?

B) echo test | mailx -s "TEST SUBJECT LINE" you@yourdomain.co.uk

An entry in your /var/adm/syslog/mail.log should appear

C) Any changes the stop and restart sendmail:

killsm
sendmail -bd -q30m

D) Check your /etc/resolv.conf file for the correct domain.

[Robin King_1]

I have 9 boxes, and this is the only one having a problem, so I've compared the sendmail.cf and sendmail.cf files with another box, and they are very similar.

Everything else suggested seems fine.

However if I try the echo statement | mailx, it doesn't deliver, doesn't send anything to syslog.log, but it does report the non-delivery to root's mail.

[Berlene Herren]

What does an nslookup or dig on that hostname show?

Berlene

[Robin King_1]

nslookup returns the expected hostname and IP from DNS. Haven't got dig installed.

[Robin King_1]

Been playing around for a few hours. It appears that the sendmail.cf was in a format for an older version, so I copied in /usr/newconfig/etc/mail/sendmail.cf, and it now appears to be working.

Thanks everyone for trying to help!