Re: Notifications email failure

["Jeff Boyce" <jboyce meridianenv com>]

> Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2005 02:05:01 -0400 (EDT)
> From: Timothy E Miller <millerte wfu edu>
> Subject: Re: Notifications email failure
> To: Ken Snider <ken snider datawire net>
<Cc: "Discussion of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 \(Taroon\)"
<<taroon-list redhat com>
<Message-ID: <Pine A41 4 58 0508300155040 1036488 f1n3 sp2net wfu edu>
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<
<Well, that certainly was the way it worked under Red Hat 7.3.... but
<not any longer.  And while I'm an idiot when it comes to sendmail
<(and I actually like it that way), I just verified it too, er, the
<behavior, not my idiocy...no verification needed on the latter.
<
<RHEL3+ switched to this mail submission agent (i think that's what
<it's called) model.  You have a separate sendmail.cf file for
<SUBMITTING email that for TRANSPORTING email.  Look in /etc/mail.
<submit.cf is for sending/submitting email for delivery.  sendmail.cf
<actually handles the transport.
<
<Local mail does NOT get delivered if sendmail is stopped AND
<submit.cf exists.  I believe (and take this with a huge fat grain of
<salt) that if you remove the submit.* files that behavior reverts to
<the old RH7.3 ways...  I think I saw that somewhere but it's 2am and
<I'm in NC...so it's way late.
<
<Now, before you freak (like I did) about running sendmail on a
<non-mail server, the line (in sendmail.mc) :
<     DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl
<means that sendmail only listens on localhost and doesn't even open
<a socket on any interface other than localhost.
<
<By the way, it's yet another of Red Hat's "oh we are changing this
<and not really going to advertise it anywhere" improvements.  Sort
<of like Qlogic HBAs in RHEL4.  But that's yet another late night
<rant I'm just going to shut up on.
<
<Hope that helps.
<-Tim

Ok, so based on your hypothesis regarding the submit* files, what would be 
the appropriate approach for resolving this?  Should I rename the submit 
files to submitarchive* or should I be making some other type of 
configuration change, such as running sendmail but configuring it to only 
listen locally?

Jeff Boyce
www.meridianenv.com