Randy Merritt wrote:
> Has anyone used /usr/bin/sendmail to send an email
> over the Internet using a shell window and a simple
> mail message?  [this started with attempting to use
> PHP's mail function]  Using sendmail with only -t and
> entering a simple email msg in a shell window fails
> with a Connection timeout message in /var/log/maillog.
> 
> The MTA listed in maillog is pingable and names a
> Yahoo address.  My From: address is my (SL) login and
> my To: address is my (valid) Yahoo email address;
> 'Subject: foo' and body a few 'x's.
> 
> The SMTP relay is my ISP's well-known SMTP MTA
> address.  I've added an 'auth' FEATURE for this MTA in
> sendmail.cf to no avail.
> 
> What seems odd is that this same simple email msg sent
> to my Yahoo address with Thunderbird goes out just
> fine.  But the same send attempt with sendmail fails. 
> In a Thunderbird test the sendmail daemon was even
> shutdown.
> 
> I've tried some variations from documentation at
> www.sendmail.org but so far no luck.  In the interest
> in saving some time if anyone has already solved this
> I'd appreciate some insight.
> 
> TIA,
> Randy Merritt
> 

Hi Randy,
I'm not positive I have the answer, but I know of two places to start 
looking.

First.  You have to have sendmail running in order to have it send mail. 
  By default, it only allows outgoing e-mail, so although we always say 
turn all your services off ... if you want to use sendmail for outgoing, 
you have to turn it on.  (Yes, older versions of sendmail, particularly 
in RedHat 7.3, you didn't have to turn it on.  That has changed, and at 
least at Fermilab, we haven't found a way around this yet.)
/etc/init.d/sendmail start

Second.  If you still arn't getting your e-mail sent, the best place to 
look is at is /var/log/maillog.  Probrubly the best thing to do is in 
one console window do a 'tail -f /var/log/maillog' and then in the other 
window, actually send the e-mail using sendmail.  Then look at the 
resulting entry.

Hopefully that get's you started.  I'm not an expert at sendmail by any 
means, but knowing those two things, often get's you past alot of problems.

As a side note, most modern e-mail clients, such as thunderbird and 
kmail, do not use sendmail.  They contact the outgoing smtp server 
directly, whatever server it is you told them.  So turning sendmail off, 
or postfix off, doesn't affect them unless you told them to use your 
local sendmail for sending.

Troy

-- 
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Troy Dawson  [log in to unmask]  (630)840-6468
Fermilab  ComputingDivision/CSS  CSI Group
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