cant telnet into email server

[wolf2x]

I'm running Red Hat 7.1 with sendmail. On the computer, I can "telnet localhost 25". I can go through and send email out through the command line.

I can't "telnet nameofserver 25". Also, I can't telnet to port 110 or 143 under localhost or the name of the server.

Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

 

[ForumKid]

Make sure your firewall is not blocking the connection.

 

[wolf2x]

Okay. I've gotten most of it worked out. On the localmachine using localhost, I can telnet into ports 25,110, and 143. I can't telnet into port 25 using the server's actual name or the alias' that I have set up. But, I can user the server's name to telnet into ports 110 and 143.

Basically, I can telnet any of the three ports without any problems if I use the IP address 127.0.0.1. It's only when use 207.212.x.x as the ip address that I can't telnet into port 25. That is from a remote machine or the local machine.

I changed some settings on the firewall but still no dice. I even changed it to "no firewall" until I get this fixed.

 

[DumTech]

How is the network set up?

You've verified that 207.212.x.x is the address of the machine you're working with (as in ifconfig eth0 (for instance) shows that as your IP?)?

You may be going through a different interface to get to this address... Would your network be routing a request for 207.212.x.x to a gateway or something?

 

[PcLinuxGuru]

Well since your using the nameoftheserver you want to make sure your DNS and/or Hosts files has the name = ip address. Otherwise it won't know. Can you telnet using the real IP? Also check your hosts.allow and hosts.deny files located in /etc. I was helping someone else and they had ALL:ALL in hosts.deny. Putting sendmail:ALL in hosts.allow fixed his problem.
Bill

 

[nwsmith]

I just answered this one on another thread, but here it is again! (Redhat have change the default setting for sendmail so it will only accept connections from localhost!)

Have to look in the file /etc/mail/sendmail.rc
It tells you to comment out a line if you want to accept email over the network,
rather than just on 127.0.0.1
This means put 'dnl' at the start of the following line:
DAEMON_OPTIONS('Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')
Then create a new /etc/sendmail.cf like this:
m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/sendmail.cf
Then restart sendmail like this:
service sendmail restart

 

[nwsmith]

You could also look in sendmail.org's faq to find the answer:

Section 5.3.3 -- Why can't I receive mail with Red Hat 7.1?

http://www.sendmail.org/faq/section5.html#5.3.3