mail server configuration

[symbiotic]

Hi all,
I have a mail server setup (sendmail on a slackware box). It works correctly for sending mail through my LAN but I can't send mail to outside domains. Let's say if I try to send mail from my account on my mail server, mymail@myserver.com to myfriend@yahoo.com, I get an error like (using Outlook, but if I use pine I get a similiar message):


"The message could not be sent because one of the recipients was rejected by the server. The rejected e-mail address was "myfriend@yahoo.com" ...
Server Response: '533 5.1.2 <myfriend@yahoo.com>... Unrecognized host name yahoo.com ...&quot;

Is this a setting in sendmail, or maybe the way I have bind configured?
Any help is much appreciated

 

[symbiotic]

I dunno, my dsl company wanted 20 bucks extra a month to give me a static ip, cable is like 15 bucks less, and it's faster in my area. The cable people said that my ip will be static if I'm using a router and not a direct connection. Although that doesn't really make much sense. Ah well, I'll check it out some more.

As for subdomains, I don't really understand how that works. Like, can mail.mydomain.com and

http://www.mydomain.com

be the same machine? And where are those names defined?

 

[RhythmAce]

They are defined in you dns records which are useuall accessed through your registrar where you bought the name. I use Zone Edit at

http://www.zoneedit.com

because I have a dynamic ip from my cable company that changes every couple of months. This way I can go to zone edit and make the changes and the will take affect right away. Some registrars will take up to 48 hours, not including the time it takes to propogate. If you would like to know a little more about how dns works, you should go there and check it out. Everything is in plain english and easy to understand. You can have as many domains and sub-domains pointing to the same ip as you want. Zone Edit will let you have up to 5 zones (domains) for free and each can have an unlimited number of sub-domains.

 

[symbiotic]

Wow! I just finally fixed this problem, after a week of utter frustration! Ah, the taste of victory! This wonderful feeling of being smarter than a machine, the only reason for having computers as a hobby/occupation.

Since I have been switching over to linux, I've been befuddled, confused, pissed off, so many times but always I win in the end, and it's always worth it.

As I suspected it was simply my inexperience with the nix enviroment that got me. I didn't understand what the whole m4 script was about. I didn't realize there was a whole complement of .mc files for each different type of OS. I had copied one I found online. Just today I discovered linux.smtp.mc, which solved 1/2 my problems. The other half was easy. I never started ipop3d. I can now get mail both in and out from my domain.

Thank you guys so much for your patience and advice. I've never felt so dumb, I've been a programmer for six years, and I'm used to knowing what I'm talking about. This is my first foray into the sysadmin world, and as different and interesting as it is, it's been a very humbling experience.

Thanks guys, I'm sure I'll have more questions soon