All my incoming mail gets stuck in the queue..

[bentmonkey]

Hi All,
I am almost bald from pulling out my hair on this one!! I thought it was due time to post my question!!

Everything is working fine; incoming/outgoing... other than all of my incoming mail just stays in the queue and doesn't get delivered to the proper mail box!

my configuration:

one user account: bentmonkey

three aliases pointing to bentmonkey: info, admin, webmaster.


this is the mail log I am receiving...after looking at it myself; it appears my /usr/libexec/mail.local is missing..hmmmm... if this is the problem how can I install it? Suse Linux 8.1, sendmail 8.12.7

Feb 22 12:35:46 bentmonkey sendmail[29223]: h1MKZkFN029223: from=<redlineracerx@hotmail.com>, size=5372, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<001101c2dab2$6188bbe0$0100a8c0@Th3M0nk3y>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=oe14.pav2.hotmail.com [64.4.36.118]
Feb 22 12:35:46 bentmonkey sendmail[29225]: h1MKZkFN029223: Warning: program /usr/libexec/mail.local unsafe: No such file or directory
Feb 22 12:35:46 bentmonkey sendmail[29225]: h1MKZkFN029223: SYSERR(root): Cannot exec /usr/libexec/mail.local: No such file or directory
Feb 22 12:35:46 bentmonkey sendmail[29224]: h1MKZkFN029223: smtpquit: mailer local exited with exit value 71
Feb 22 12:35:46 bentmonkey sendmail[29224]: h1MKZkFN029223: to=bentmonkey, delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local, pri=35562, relay=local, dsn=4.4.2, stat=Deferred: Connection reset by local


however when I flush the queue my mail is then delivered!
well, with an error in the process

Running /var/spool/mqueue/h1MEhUM5014228 (sequence 2 of 13)
bentmonkey@bentmonkey.com... Warning: alias database /etc/aliases.db out of date
bentmonkey@bentmonkey.com... aliased to bentmonkey
bentmonkey@bentmonkey.com... Connecting to local...
bentmonkey@bentmonkey.com... Sent

thanks,
-Paul

 

[RhythmAce]

Did you run 'newaliases' after updating aliases? You may also want to check out 'procmail' as your local mailer.

 

[bentmonkey]

Thanks RhythmAce...

I forgot to mention... I am a sendmail newbie... well linux newbie for that matter!! I have been using webmin to configure everything... Can you tell me a little more about your suggestions... thanks... eager to make this problem go away...

-Paul

 

[RhythmAce]

Webmin makes life a dream doesn't it? It will take care of creating the '*.db' files for you when you save the edited file. As for your local mail, look near the bottom of your sendmail.mc file and you will see two lines that start with 'MAILER'. These define your MTA and local mailer, in that order. If your local mailer is 'mail', type 'whereis mail' from the command line. It will show you where 'mail' and 'mail.local' are. You will need to edit sendmail.mc and look for a 'define' line that shows the path to your local mailer. Edit it to match your path. The look for a 'FEATURE' line that passes arguments to the local mailer, and make sure it calls the correct one. Then run m4 to build the new sendmail.cf and restart sendmail.

 

[bentmonkey]

uhg! My M4 is not working properly... for some reason when I run m4 through webmin it only writes one line in the /etc/sendmail.cf ... good thing I backed up the original ... here is what it is writing... any idea why it is doing this? I have it set to write from sendmail.mc

Sendmail config VERSIONID($Id: cf.m4,v 8.32 1999/02/07 07:26:14 gshapiro Exp $)

And then I get locked out of the sendmail modules on webmin because it is telling me that my sendmail config file is not up to date...he he...ya think!

If I am not mistaken... doesn't sendmail build from the /etc/sendmail.cf every time it is started? I even tried to go in and manually change the path in the sendmail.cf... I found the bad path...replaced it with the good one (which I found by doing your suggestion of 'whereis mail') I then restarted sendmail and it ignored my changes...

-Paul

 

[RhythmAce]

Sendmail.cf is the configuration file that sendmail reads everytime it starts. If you compare it to sendmail.mc, you will see that it is a lot bigger. Where did all that extra stuff come from you ask? Well sendmail.cf is built with the m4 macro compiler. Sendmail.mc is not much more than a list of macros. When you run m4, it reads sendmail.mc and gets each macro then looks for it under /usr/share/sendmail-cf/. Under this directory are sub-directories that contain the macros. The path could be different for your distro. I think you have m4 installed but it isn't finding the macros (.m4 files). You also mentioned that your sendmail.cf is in /etc/. You may want to double check that. I believe starting with version 8.12.7, all of the sendmail files that were in that directory are now in /etc/mail/. If you edited /etc/sendmail.cf directly, make sure there isn't another one in /etc/mail/.

 

[bentmonkey]

problem fixed!! thanks for all your help

-Paul

 

[RhythmAce]

Just for kicks, how'd ya fix it? Switch to RedHat?

 

[ssrikant]

when i do the telnet mydomain.com 25 and all the above stuff (post1)
when i enter :

rcpt to:<root@mail.mydomain.com>250.2.1.5

i get:

<root@mail.mydomain.com> .......recipient ok (will queue)
after completeing the restof the procedure

the message is being queue at /var/spool/mqueue (mandrake9.0)
once this is done when i flush the queue i get
the following

$sendmail -q -v

Running /var/spool/mqueue/h47Mnde2002461 (sequence 1 of 1)
mail.mydomain.com:Name sever timeout
<root@mail.mydomain.com>...transient parse error message queued for future delivery


i dont understand head and tail from this and iam tired and i have lost all hope of seeing my sever running any directions is highly appreciated