SUMMARY: sendmail 8.8.6 won't start on 2.5.1 box

From: Lisa Weihl (lweihl@cs.bgsu.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 30 1998 - 20:26:23 CDT


It turned out to be that I needed a fully qualified name in my NIS hosts
file. Stupid me had FQ'ed it in the LOCAL /etc/hosts not realizing that it
was never getting there because the NIS map was returning it unqualified
which isn't an error:-) That'll teach me to work on stuff late at night.

I am woefully undereducated in all aspects of Unix but especially the
network services. I have all the O'Reilly books for DNS, TCP/IP but I
can't seem to find the time to get through them.

I did take the time late last night to read through chap. 6 of the DNS book
about the resolver, as this box wasn't running a nameserver. This makes me
curious about BIND. I know I was told to put BIND 8.1.2 on my new server
that will run as a DNS primary server but now I wondering should it also go
on my Sun's that aren't running a name server simply for the better
resolver? What are the implications of this, as I saw an item on the
Sendmail FAQ regarding compiling problems with BIND 8.1.2 and sendmail.
Something to the effect that I'd need to recompile sendmail with the new
bind to get the new resolver and there may have been problems with that.
Comments welcome.

Thanks as usual,
Lisa

Comments of those that helped below.

Jeff Wasilko <jeffw@smoe.org>

> solar sendmail[10968]: My unqualified host name (solar) unknown;
> sleeping for retry

I think this question is answered in the sendmail faq at
www.sendmail.org

MY COMMENT: I ADMIT I HAD BEEN ON THE SENDMAIL PAGE A LOT BUT HADN'T GONE
THROUGH THE FAQ CLOSELY. I DID FIND AN ISSUE WITH 2.5 HANGING BUT IT WASN'T
FOR THIS REASON.

*******************************************************************
spillar@dent.agric.nsw.gov.au (Ron Spillane)

you should change your hosts line in /etc/nsswitch.conf to

hosts: nis dns files

your nsswitch.conf file controls what sendmail looks at and it needs dns.

MY COMMENT: TURNS OUT I DIDN'T NEED TO CHANGE MY LOCAL /ETC/HOSTS OR
/ETC/NSSWITCH.CONF OR /ETC/RESOLV.CONF. IT WAS ALL AN NIS PROBLEM
*******************************************************************

"Gustavo A. Lozano" <glozano@colinter.net>

May be sendmail is trying to resolve the hostname via DNS instead of NIS.

Trying setting up a Name Server, and adding DNS to hosts line in
/etc/nsswitch.conf.

If u dont want DNS, just make sure that the configuration file uses
FEATURE NODNS.
*******************************************************************

Sebastian Benoit <benoit@Mathematik.Uni-Marburg.de

check out /etc/resolv.conf
is there a line
domain <your.domain.name>
or
search <your.domain.name> <other.domain.name>
Is a vaild nameserver in that file ?
(nameserver ip.ip.ip.ip)
???

I believe in the sendmail configuration you can tell sendmail
not to use NIS / NIS+ ... and user DNS directly.
You can find out with the debug switches,

e.g. $> sendmail -d0.11 -bp

*******************************************************************

qzc82z@hqs.mid.gmeds.com (Pado Jeffrey K.)

Had a similar problem at a former company with sendmail 8.8.8.

The sendmail process isn't hanging, it should come back after 60 seconds.
It is
trying to qualify your host and is sleeping for about 60 seconds. From what I
remember, you have two options:

1) Modify your hosts table to reflect the qualified name (solar.company.com).

or

2) Add the subdomain name to the sendmail.cf file.

Dmcompany.com
Cmcompany.com

You may also need to set Dj also:

Dj$m

I can't recall what else you may need, but this should get you started.

For more info, you can search the sendmail web site at www.sendmail.org. They
also have an address you can send email questions to.
*******************************************************************

Stefan Voss <s.voss@terradata.de>

i got the same problem with sendmail 8.8.5. As a work around, i extended the
line

   IP-ADDRESS blah

in /etc/hosts to read

   IP-ADDRESS blah blah.terradata.de

Doing the same in the NIS map 'hosts 'will work also.

Not quite a solution, but it works...

*******************************************************************
"Eric Levine" <levine@cadence.com>

When I ran into this problem, I fixed it by including the host's
fully-qualified domain name in its hosts entry. For example, change

123.45.67.89 zort

to

123.45.67.89 zort zort.foo.com

*******************************************************************
"Otto, Doug" <dotto@alldata.com>

You need FQDN entry in the local hosts. i.e. it the machine name is
sparky, you need a line in hosts that looks like this:

192.168.1.1 sparky.bgsu.edu sparky

*******************************************************************
Jeff Graham <demit@best.com>

try making your first entry after the ip number in /etc/hosts be a FQDN
(fully qualified domain name)

Meaning if you have

1.2.3.4 host host.domain
make it
1.2.3.4 host.domain host
instead

This allows sendmail to find the domain name of the box (which is what
it is complaining about)

I believe you can also set the /etc/defaultdomain to the correct value
and have it work.

*******************************************************************
Bismark Espinoza <bismark@alta.jpl.nasa.gov>

Put the fully qualified host name in /etc/hosts.

Try:
hosts: files nis dns

Check the /etc/resolv.conf .

******************************************************************
Lisa Weihl, System Administrator E-mail: lweihl@cs.bgsu.edu
Department of Computer Science Office: Hayes 225
Bowling Green State University Phone: (419) 372-0116
Bowling Green, Ohio 43403-0214 Fax: (419) 372-8061



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