.forward not working in sendmail

[Jeff Hoevenaar]

RedHat ES 3.0 sendmail-8.12.11-4.RHEL3.1

Have a .forward w/ correct permissions in root's home directory. I do not start the sendmail service on any UNIX/Linux server I have and the .forward works. On this OS version the .forward only seems to work when I have the sendmail service running. Can anyone tell me why. This version of sendmail seems to be completly different than any of my other systems.

Error Message without sendmail service started:

sendmail -v root
test email
.
root... Connecting to [127.0.0.1] via relay...
root... Deferred: Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]

Thanks.

[Steven E. Protter]

This is probably a sendmail.cf error.

If sendmail.cf is generated from a sendmail.mc file the most likely cause is this:

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=192.168.0.40, Name=MTA')dnl

For an ip address that is not assinged to the machine.

The messages in the maillog file will not be helpful in figuring it out.

Thnere are other possible causes but they all lead back to misconfiguration of sendmail.cf, either directly, which I'd never do or via the sendmail.mc file.

SEP

[Jeff Hoevenaar]

This is the line in my sendmail.mc.

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl

This sendmial stuff is driving me crazy. It works very easily on all my aother systems except these RedHat Enterprise systems. Do you know of any good documentation on sendmail. All I can find is bits and pieces.

thanks.

[Deep_6]

Hi,
check your /etc/resolve.conf and check out for the localhost.localdomain entry is it correct.

Secondly if you have a relay in between your host and the server check out for the SMART HOST (IP ADDRESS OF YOUR SENDMAIL SERVER) ENTRY IN RELAY.

When you are sending mail from root to yoru server and if you have enabled the MASCURADE option then the mascurade wont work on root. You should send a mail by a user then only the mascurade would work.

Hope this would help to solve your query

Regards
Deep