sendmail

Bob McClure Jr robertmcclure at earthlink.net
Wed Jul 6 17:02:13 UTC 2005


Any chance you could beat your mail program into submission and make
it wrap lines every 72 chars or so?  It would make this a lot easier
to read.  I'll reformat it.

On Wed, Jul 06, 2005 at 11:09:53AM -0000, ajay wrote:
>   
> hi folks 
> 
> i would be highly thankful if anyone can tell me how sendmail
> fetches mails from my .com server on internet

sendmail doesn't fetch mail.  sendmail handles mail sent to it.

> i have redhat 9.0 and sendmail was working ok , since yesterday we
> are not receiving any mails from outside. i checked my .com server
> it's ok .  there 's something wrong in my config files.

The most likely tool picking up your mail from another server would be
fetchmail. 

> specifically i want to know which configuration files, service is
> responsible to fetch mails from .com server.
> is it fetchmail/procmail.

Probably.

> i really do not know , i tried a lot rolling my self in /etc/mail
> folder ,

Huh?

> observing .mc and other files there but i did not get any
> clue there.

Have you looked in /var/log/maillog and /var/log/messages?

If your mail is being fetched by root, that's the most likely place to
find clues.

> earlier i used to fetch using vpop3 (windows based)
> 
> what i know in general to fetch mails from .com mail server we need
> following:
> 
> username
> password
> mail server ip
> 
> i know all these info , do not know which particular file and
> service is carring all these parameters.
> 
> 
> we have one pop a/c , and rest are all aliases under it
> 
> help me..

The first thing you need to find out is how the mail is supposed to be
fetched.  Perhaps fetchmail is running as root or some other system
user, or it's running from a cron job.  Or it's running as your mere
mortal self either as a daemon or from a cron job.

To find the cron job, as root, run

  crontab -l

Then look in /etc/cron.d/ for signs of a file with the appropriate
command in it.  If there's a possibility that the fetcher is running
hourly, look in /etc/cron.hourly/ for such a script.

If nothing found, run

  crontab -l

as your mere mortal self.

Once you find out how your mail is supposed to be fetched, then you
know where to look for config problems.

<lesson>
When you set up a system, document it.
</lesson>

> i want to anything i will tell 
> 
> tell me where should i go and dig in /etc !
> 
> thanks in advance 
> 
> rgds
> 
> ajay

Cheers,
-- 
Bob McClure, Jr.             Bobcat Open Systems, Inc.
robertmcclure at earthlink.net  http://www.bobcatos.com
God doesn't have (or need) a Plan B.




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