OK, y'all.
I just moved over from the guinness list, so maybe this has already been
hashed out. Pun intended.
Last night I spent a couple of hours troubleshooting a new mailserver
that wouldn't listen on port 25. Mail goes across local users, mail goes
out, mail CAN'T come in.
So, having done this "hunnids of times" in 6.x & 7.0, and being one of
those jerks who usually RTFMs first, I look at the 7.1 Reference Guide and
see:
<quote>
A default sendmail.cf file will be installed in /etc. The default
configuration should work for most SMTP-only sites. It will not work for
UUCP (UNIX to UNIX Copy) sites; you will need to generate a new
sendmail.cf if you must use UUCP mail transfers.
Note
Although SMTP servers are supported automatically, IMAP (Internet Message
Access Protocol) servers are not. If your ISP uses an IMAP server rather
than an SMTP sever, you must install the IMAP package. Without it, your
system won't know how to pass information to the IMAP server or retrieve
your mail.
</quote>
[BTW, that's a straight copy & paste off the website. Check
out the spelling]
Finally, on about line 250 of /etc/sendmail.cf, I find this:
O DaemonPortOptions=Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA
Well, duh. So in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc, very well buried in the middle of
a nest of comments at the end of the file:
dnl This changes sendmail to only listen on the loopback device 127.0.0.1
dnl and not on any other network devices. Comment this out if you want
dnl to accept email over the network.
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
My first question, gentlemen, ladies, and fellow rogues, is when the heck
did a local-only MTA become a default configuration? Bear in mind that this
means sendmail won't RECEIVE mail from the outside world.
My second question (since I know that the answer to the first is that we
now cater to Winbies) is, don't you think that ought to be documented
somewhere other than the end of a macro config file?
The paragraph I quoted from the Reference Guide is flat-out wrong. This
configuration will NOT work on an smtp-only site. (well, it would, if you
only want to read/serve mail generated on the server....)
I know that some of the guys at Durham think I'm a troll, or just a
RedHat-baiter. The fact is that the owner of this particular machine runs
SuSE on his desktop, and installed RH at my recommendation. I truly
believe that RH (except for 7.0) is the best server option out there for
most shops. But I also feel that if we, as RedHat proponents, don't do
the screaming, the rest of the world gets to do it.
See ya later,
Doc
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