No response *at all* when trying to run "service sendmail start"? No error messages, *nothing* but the command prompt?
That usually means the sendmail service has been disabled by setting the appropriate variable to "no" in /etc/sysconfig/sendmail.
Because the "service" command did not display an error message, it means /etc/init.d/sendmail exists. That means you are not merely installing sendmail 8.14.3: I think you are *overwriting* RHEL5's standard version of sendmail with your custom version.
The problem with that is, when RedHat publishes an update to RHEL 5's sendmail, then yum (the RHEL 5 package management tool) is going to again overwrite your custom version with RedHat's update.
(Assuming your system *is* registered to RedHat Network; but if it isn't, why aren't you using the free CentOS Linux distribution instead?)
If you want to replace RedHat's standard version of sendmail with a newer version because you need some new functionality, you should have made a custom RPM with an appropriate (=higher than RHEL5 sendmail's) version number, so that the package management system knows not to replace it with the standard updates. The custom package should have included copies of all the standard startup scripts & other configuration files of standard RedHat sendmail, including /etc/init.d/sendmail and /etc/sysconfig/sendmail.
At the very least, you should now configure yum so it refuses to update sendmail automatically - and document what has been done to install a custom version of sendmail and why.
Otherwise, someone who needs to install security updates to this system when you're not available is going to hate you.
(If this system is going to handle incoming email from Internet, assume that there eventually *will* be a need to install important security updates.)
MK
MK
