steve@gapos.bt.co.uk (Steve Rooke) (02/18/91)
I have been using the UK Sendmail 2.1 package on our site with no problems until I started to try and use a nameserver. I reconfigured the config files to add nameserver to the existing multihost entries but whenever I try to mail locally sendmail thinks it is non local and tries to talk SMTP to itself with the usual "I refuse to talk to myself" message. Any ideas? I have been round the BIND manuals several times and cannot see any problems with it's setup. I have tried nslookup and it gives me the correct domain (at least I think so). Thanks Steve -- Steve Rooke steve@gapos.bt.co.uk (...mcsun!ukc!gapos!steve) UK + 394 693595 BT, CSD/AS, Area 106, Anzani House, | "You roll the dice with your heart Trinity Ave, FELIXSTOWE, Suffolk, UK | and soul, But some times you #include <std/disclaimer> | just don't know." - Sam Brown
keith@spider.co.uk (Keith Mitchell) (02/19/91)
> I have been using the UK Sendmail 2.1 package on our site with no problems > until I started to try and use a nameserver. I reconfigured the config fil! > to add nameserver to the existing multihost entries but whenever I try to m! > locally sendmail thinks it is non local and tries to talk SMTP to itself This is easy when you know the answer, but not an easy answer to find - I posted a cry for help about this one over a year ago, but in the end had to work it out for myself after a year of on-and-off head scratching and worry. So you don't go through the same :-)... The problem is that the UK-sendmail package makes a somewhat implicit assumption you are running a version of sendmail with the IDA enhancements package. The IDA enhancements add various useful features, and overcome some shortcomings in standard sendmail. The important disctinction is that in standard sendmail, while it is possible for a macro (a variable, e.g $w for hostname) to have multiple tokens in it, members of a class (a set, e.g. Cw, $=w) may only have *one* token. In the BSD networking documentation, it says you should always use the fully qualified domain names (which are parsed by sendmail as multi-token objects). The off-the-shelf sendmail.cf files you get with the BSD sendmail release know this, and only ever uses the variable "$w" when determining whether mail is local or not. However, UK sendmail.cf uses the *class* "$=w" to determine if mail is local. Things work fine so long as you don't run BIND and don't have your hostname a FQDN. But when you do, standard sendmail can't cope with a multi-token class member, and never recognises your FQDN as you own, causing the symptoms you describe. I think the only practical solution is to put IDA sendmail up - I believe you can get it from the info server at cl.cam.ac.uk. Funnily enough, this problem does not occur with the sendmail you get with Ultrix, because it strips the domain off during initialisation of $w. Apart from this, I have never been too sure exactly how UK-sendmail interacts with the nameserver - can it cope with MX-records correctly, for example ? Any enlightenment, anyone ? Hope this helps, Keith Mitchell (postmaster) Spider Systems Ltd. Spider Systems Inc. Spider Park 12 New England Executive Park Stanwell Street Burlington Edinburgh, Scotland MA 01803 Phone: +44 31-554 9424 +1 (617) 270-3510 Fax: +44 31-554 0649 keith@spider.co.uk keith%spider.co.uk@uunet.uu.net ...!uunet!ukc!spider!keith zspz01%uk.ac.ed.castle@nsfnet-relay.ac.uk