pays@mars.emse.fr (Paul-Andre Pays) (11/29/89)
Help needed with sendmail! We are having troubles with sendmail. ENVIRONEMENT: (192.31.211) | [X.25]====mars+ | +cambur---kiwi---cerise---...---(192.54.156) | | +moon | +logia | +sonia | moon: SUN 3/160 logia, sonia: 3/50s diskless served by moon cambur: SS1 kiwi, cerise, : SS1 dataless served by cambur mars: SUN 3/60 All SUN systems are running SunOS 4.0.3. mars is mainly used for running M.PLUS which is an X.400 router AND an RFC-987 gateway (RFC-X400 converter) Thus, mars is acting as the master mail site, and all other machines are running sendmail with a 'subsidiary' form of sendmail.cf The mailboxes for cambur, kiwi, cerise,... are managed by cambur for moon, sonia, logia,... are managed by moon. For X.400 specific services (eg. fax from e_mail service) we need to use a FreeFormName for the recipients of some messages. And here is the problem (put in evidence by use of mailx): when sending a message (under Mail) by & m aFreeFormNameString<foo@subd1.subd2.topd> 1. IF generated from "moon" or "cambur" THEN everything is OK, mail is generated and received OK by either an internal user of any machine within emse or external X.400 recipient (with appropriate FFName) 2. IF generated from any "secondary" machine (eg "kiwi", "cerise", "logia"...) THEN bug!!!!!! the message transfer between kiwi and cambur (or sonia and moon) BLOCKS; sendmail processes remain pendant and even replicate after some time-out (raising load up to panic abort) Note: messages without a FreeFormName for a recipient are transfered and delivered without any problem. QUESTIONS: 1. Why messages (with or without FFName) issued from "secondary" machine are transfered through the respective "server" (eg from "kiwi" to "moon" a message passes through "cambur", whereas it could perfectly be sent directly to "moon")? (all machines and networks are known from every site -through YP-) this is strange to me, but non blocking. 2. (worse) Why messages including a FFname are processed correctly when issued from servers ("moon" or "cambur") whereas the same messages issued from diskless or dataless machines (eg "kiwi" or "logia") block? We suspect that this is due to sendmail.cf, but feel completely helpless to solve it. Has someone any clue or advice? -- PAP