sendmail ? Continues

[Steve Phillips]

Stephen W wrote:

> I posted the original question re "stubborn sendmail
> start."
> 
> I have been reading with interest the responses.
> 
> I am new at this and yes, I did do an "Everything"
> install.  I fully expect that in the near future I
> will be building a side-by-side system (Windows in one
> box and linux in the other) and try to learn how to
> connect them.  One thing at a time.
> 
> I am not too worried about the sendmail "pause" but I
> would sure like to understand it and what to do about
> it... (Understanding that it will depend on my
> requirements).  The responses have been very
> informative...
> 
> I have yet to decide what to do about it and how...
> (keep them cards and letters coming).
> 
> At this point I have done nothing except walk away and
> let the box take its time and decide what to do about
> it.  (From what I have read so far there is no great
> danger in this - I hope I read it right.)
> 

The Pause is (as has been pointed out) a DNS issue. Sendmail on startup 
tries to discover what its name is (it needs this so that it can 
announce itself to the rest of the world and make some semi-intelligent 
decisions about what domains it should default to handling mail for - 
generally for internal system wide mail such as nightly logwatch 
notifications etc) - if your domain does not resolve or it cant figure 
out via DNS queries what name it is supposed to have it will give up and 
use a generic one, however, this process can take some time (30-60 
seconds) if your DNS system is not setup properly. The time is due to 
timeouts if the DNS servers that you have setup are not reachable or 
return invalid responses to the queries sendmail makes.

This can be fixed by adding a single line to /etc/hosts which will 
bypass the DNS system (usually lookups are taken from this file first 
and then the wider DNS system is consulted)

You can also force sendmail to set a name by editing the 
/etc/mail/sendmail.cf file and changing the line that reads..

# my official domain name
# ... define this only if sendmail cannot automatically determine your 
domain
#Dj$w.Foo.COM

to something like

# my official domain name
# ... define this only if sendmail cannot automatically determine your 
domain
Djmy.domain.com

(note, the Dj is the macro - this would set the domain to my.domain.com 
not jmy.domain.com)

underneith this is the line you need to edit to forward all your mail 
through the comcast mail servers as well - other people will probably be 
able to tell you how to set this up the "official" way (editing the 
sendmail.mc file) - but it works and can solve your pausing problems 
pretty much immediately.

-- 
Steve.