[thelist] Re: sendmail 8.12.5-7 problem

[Kevin Martin]

Says Carl J Meyer <cjmeyer at npcc.net>
[much good stuff]

> So I can tell you many things that are not the issue, but that doesn't
> necessarily help much, does it?  :-)

sendmail on RH 8 (and 7.3) is a maze of twisty little symlinks because
of the introduction of a tool called "alternatives" -- the idea being
that if you prefer postfix (as I do :-)) you can tell "alternatives"
to swap all the symlinks associated with sendmail, man sendmail, and
newaliases for the corresponding postfix equivalents.  Chris, is it
possible you're in an indeterminate state with neither one hooked up?
Seen it happen.  Find the sendmail startup script in /etc/rc.d/init.d
and follow the chain of links back to the actual binary executable.

Are you running sendmail as a daemon (i.e. all the time)?  Do you see
it running when you do a ps -ef?  If not:

Is there an S80sendmail in your /etc/rc.d/rc3.d ??  It should be a link
back to the init.d copy of the sendmail startup script. What happens if
you run the command "/etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail start" -- does it say
"OK" or "FAILED"?

> Do you have any other services running on this machine which are
> accessible via TCP/IP from external hosts?  Is sendmail the only one not
> accepting connections properly?

Good idea; duh, I just read a little further.  The fact that it's
apparently accepting connections from localhost strongly points to a
firewalling issue.

> > p.s. in your opinion would it be a good idea to buy a redhat 8 book? any
> > suggestions?

Not really.  Google is a lot more helpful.  RH8 is too new.