Sendmail not sending to Relay

[KPS]

Hi,

We have the sendmail daemon disabled, and we're wanting to send mail to a relay server using a "Smart" relay host. (We have this same config running on other servers and it works fine for us)

I just built a system with our imaging product and after the install, I notice I can't send mail to our relay. The OS here is RHES-3.0. I'm getting the following in my /var/log/maillog:

Feb 13 15:35:45 yogi sendmail[4466]: k1DKZjWZ004466: to=john.doe@mynet.com, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, pri=30066, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]
:q!

[Steven E. Protter · Accepted solution]

Shalom KC,

Have you ever generated a sendmail.cf file from a sendmail.mc macro?

It would appear that your sendmail.cf configuration is set to refuse from localhost.

I'd need to see the sendmail.mc file.

You can probably fix this by installing a sendmail.cf default file.

rpm -e sendmail....

rpm ivh it back in.

This will get you a default sendmail.cf

Then try again the mail.

You set smartrelay with the DS directive?

The relay server must explicity accept mail from this machine.

SEP

[Ivan Ferreira]

That is exactly what I told you in your previous post. If you disable the sendmail service, it will refuse the connection and your relay won't work.

[Steven E. Protter]

It is possible to not have the sendmail daemon running and relay mail that is generated locally. Thats why I think the sendmail.cf file is not stock.

I may be wrong. Sendmail has been giving me a headache lately.

SEP

[Vitaly Karasik_1]

Unfortunately, out-of-the-box [RHEL] sendmail config doesn't allow to send email if sendmail if down.
As far as I remember, if you remove /etc/mail/submit.cf, you'll be able to send email even when sendmail is down.

[Ivan Ferreira]

You are right Vitaly. If you move/remove /etc/mail/submit.cf, you are able to send mail with sendmail service down. I just tested.

[Vipulinux]

Hi

If you just want to relay mail. Use the defaulkt config that comes with RHEL And add smarthost entry in the sendmail.cf file
where smarthost will be the name of the mail server you want to forward mails to.

Cheers

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

Vitaly is right, the DS directive needs to be configured, then the mail should relay.

Going to a default sendmail.cf and then modifying the DS directive should permit mail to relay with sendmail not running.

You could also always configure cron to run a sendmail -v -q

This would run the queue regularly and push mail off the server, if DS was set up correctly to a server that permits relay.

SEP