User Unknown on Sendmail 8.8.6

[Chris Watson]

On Sendmail 8.8.6 running on HP-UX 11.00 I am getting User Known when I try sendmail -bv UKroot I get 'User Unknown'.

A grep of passwd indicates that UKroot is a valid user.

I have also added an alias of UKroot : UKroot, and tried lots of others things, but still get the same message.

Any ideas?

[Robin Wakefield]

Hi Chris,

have you checked for a .forward file?

Try running sendmail in debug mode, e.g.

sendmail -d27.0,27.127 UKroot

will give you full alias tracing.

Rgds, Robin

[Chris Watson]

Thanks.

I get ;

UKMIS> sendmail -bv -d27.0,27.127 UKroot
setalias(/etc/mail/aliases)
map implicit:Alias0 /etc/mail/aliases
aliaswait(implicit:/etc/mail/aliases)
alias(ukroot)
UKroot (, ukroot) aliased to UKroot
alias: QDONTSEND 40029798=UKroot:
mailer 3 (local), host `'
user `ukroot', ruser `'
next=0, alias 0, uid 0, gid 0
flags=6008
owner=(none), home="(none)", fullname="(none)"
orcpt="(none)", statmta=(none), status=(none)
rstatus="(none)"
specificity=0, statdate=Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970

sendtolist: QSELFREF 40029798=UKroot:
mailer 3 (local), host `'
user `ukroot', ruser `'
next=0, alias 0, uid 0, gid 0
flags=6009
owner=(none), home="(none)", fullname="(none)"
orcpt="(none)", statmta=(none), status=(none)
rstatus="(none)"
specificity=0, statdate=Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970

self_reference(UKroot)
... getpwnam(ukroot)... failed
... getpwnam(ukroot)... failed
... cannot break loop for "UKroot"
UKroot... User unknown

Could you help me decode this?

[Roger Baptiste]

Chris,

Are you able to sendmail to other user(s)
in the same system? If that is possible, the problem can be isolated to this
specific user UKroot. Is the userid defined
in the password file as UKroot or ukroot?
From the debugging messages, it seems it
is unable to vaidated the user identity
from the password file.
Try a sendmail -vt ukuser

-R

[Robin Wakefield · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

OK, it's because you have upper case letters in the name. You've got 2 options:

. change it to lower case, or...

. in the "Mlocal" definition in sendmail.cf, make sure the F= contains the u flag, which says "don't convert the name to lower case. Unfortunately, this is not a recommended setting for the local delivery agent, and may cause other problems.

Rgds, Robin.

[Craig Rants]

Robin is 100% correct, the problem is the capital lettters. I have had the same problem and changing the account to lowercase was the answer.

[Chris Watson]

Thanks Robin.

I am not able to remove the capitals from the login id, and so have put 'u' against 'Mlocal'. This has cured the problem.

I just hope the other consequences of using 'uu' don't reveal themselves!

Thanks everyone for your assistance.