redhat 8 mail - local works remote doesn't

[Mathias]

I just upgraded to RH8 from RH7.3. I had mail running fine before, now I'm not able to connect over port 25 from other computers.

hosts.allow is not changed.

I've tried telner smtp and with that I'm getting:

telnet: connect to address nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn: Connection refused

What is checked before allowing a login prompt? I thought it would be just hosts.allow, but it has to be something else?

The uprade wouldn't have changed iptables or any such setting, would it?

[Steven E. Protter]

Check the file /etc/xinet.d/telnet

disable might now be set to Y.

Change it restart xinetd

service xinetd restart

For mail.
check /etc/mail/access

They probably tightened up the list of relay servers or totally shut it down.

Its anti spam.

SEP

[Mathias]

I can telnet, just not on port 25 (smtp). so this works:
telnet
and this doesn't
telnet smtp

"telnet localhost smtp" works fine though. So the service exists, but the server stops the access to it.

The access file has these entry:
192.168.1.102 RELAY

That is the address I'm comming in from.

It doesn't look like iptables has anything to do with it. ip forwarding still works. As does surfing from the clients (via ip forwarding) and surfing from the server. I'm also having problems receiving email, but I hope that issue is resolved by getting the issue with being allowed to send resolved.

[Alexander Chuzhoy]

edit the file
/etc/mail/sendmail.mc
locate the line containing 127.0.0.1
it should begin with "DAEMON OPTIONS"
append "dnl" in front of this line.
then run the following command
"m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf"
this is one command and shouldn't be line wrapped.
after this restart the sendmail service and everything will work.

[Mathias]

Alexander,

I don't even have that line in my version of it (configured for cyrus and virtual mailservers).

The documentation in the new sendfile.mc tells me that that line will restrict use such that only the local server can use it.

Am I missing something? Did something change with the config for sendmail that causes the server to refuse even a login on that port?

[Alexander Chuzhoy]

if you edit /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
see if you have Addr=127.0.0.1
in DaemonPortOptions line if you do -remove it.

[Mathias]

Problem solved.

The problem is that I'm studpid...

I had my newly generated sendmail.cf file in /etc. It worked until redhat dropped in another file in /etc/mail. I guess the latter is the first place it looks in or where it looks changed between 7 and 8.

Thanks for your help. Alexanders last email triggered me to think about these things.

[Balaji N]

http://www.sendmail.org/faq/section5.html#5.3.1.3

yet another FAQ.
-balaji