sendmail, smclient start delays on RH9 workstation 1

[wmg]

I'm not sure exactly why but for some reason sendmail and smclient are now taking 2 minutes and 1 minutes respectively to start on startup of Redhat9 (I figured out the times by looking in the log file). They didn't use to do this and it seemed to happen after I updated the firmware in my ADSL router (?!).

What I'm wanting to know is :

A) Do you have any idea why they'd take that long or where I could look to see if there is a problem (the mail.log has some errors about unqualified local host name but they don't seem to relate to boot times at all)
B) Do I need to run sendmail at all? If it's just a desktop workstation (not a mail server or anything) do I actually need it even running? Or do the email clients still need it there to send/receive email?


Thanks guys!

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. [Robert Wilensky, 1997]

 

[sleipnir214]

"unqualified local host name" sounds interesting. How is your server getting its IP address?

Yes, you need sendmail (or another MTA) if you wish to send mail from Linux applications.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[wmg]

Thanks for the clarification on the last point sleipnir!

The desktop/workstation is getting it's IP address from the DHCP function embedded in my ADSL router. My /etc/hosts file has a single line in it:

127.0.0.1 josiah localhost

Do I need something else in/around there?

Thanks again!

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. [Robert Wilensky, 1997]

 

[sleipnir214]

I don't use sendmail, so I don't know if what is significant to this case.

Anyway my /etc/hosts has a line of the form:

127.0.0 localhost <machinename> <machinename>.<domainname>

it is possible that sendmail needs to know the fully-qualified name of the host. Did you notice whether this error is a new thing or not?

My original thought was that with the new firmware update, the DSL adapter's DHCP server is taking an excessive amount of time to lease an address to your machine. With that in mind, you might also try setting a static IP addresses on your network and doing away with the DHCP server.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[wmg]

Hmmm - good point - I'll try setting the IP statically and see if it reduces the time taken for sendmail and smclient to start. Not sure if the error was there all the time or just since the problem started happening - I guess that's one of those 'it's ok so no need to look for errors' things ;-) (I should know better!)

&quot;I don't use sendmail...&quot;

Being that &quot;you need sendmail (or another MTA)&quot;, may I ask which one you use and, if I may, why?

Thanks!
wmg

We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. [Robert Wilensky, 1997]

 

[sleipnir214]

I'm currently running qmail on 5 servers and postfix on a sixth. I've always used qmail, but I wanted to see what postfix is like.

My strongest reason for running qmail was that it is lighweight and fast, and I, to date, have not needed functionality that could only be provided by the higher complexity of sendmail.

There have been some arguments about security holes in sendmail, but I have to specific data on that. I do know that more complex code can make it harder to swat all the bugs -- but also that this is not necessarily true.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[wmg]

Thanks again Sleipnir!

Would you know how easy/likely/plausible it would be for me to extract sendmail from RH9 and put something like qmail/postfix in it's place (being that I really only need to send/receieve email from Mozilla and the like - sometimes from two or more X based sessions).

I'll start having a look around some how-tos and stuff at lunch time.



We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true. [Robert Wilensky, 1997]

 

[sleipnir214]

Both sendmail and postfix ship with RedHat 9. It's just that sendmail is the default mailserver.

I found the postfix home page (

http://www.postfix.org/)

to have very good information on it.

Want the best answers? Ask the best questions:

http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

TANSTAAFL!!

 

[manarth]

I'm curious...sendmail is an SMTP engine. If you're connecting to a remote SMTP server (e.g. your ISPs), why would you need sendmail?

<marc> i wonder what will happen if i press this...[ul][li]please give feedback on what works / what doesn't[/li][li]need some help? how to get a better answer: faq581-3339[/li][/ul]

 

[wmg]

I tried a bunch of things in the weekend and nothing seemed to make any difference.

Another *nix friend said that I should be able to remove it (same reason as you said marc). I did some reading and found suggestions that some internal processes may rely on a local MTA for exchanging information. I removed the sendmail RPM (after fetchmail and mutt which have a sendmail dependancy - neither of which I use either) and am keeping an eye on things to make sure everything works ok.

So far so good - and now my RH9 box starts up 3 minutes faster than before!

;-)

&quot;A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other human invention in history...with the possible exception of handguns and tequila.&quot;

-Mitch Ratcliffe