sendmail aliases not worked as expected

[mgmcomm at hotmail.com]

I am having trouble getting /etc/mail/aliases to properly forward system 
messages such as cron or periodic events.  Actually this problem affects 
even mail input using the mail command or any other method.  Although the 
cron/periodic is what I require the most.

When a cron or periodic task creates an email to say root...it gets mailed 
to root at host.domain.com instead of root at domain.com.  Which results in an 
error message

Jan  7 03:03:01 butters sm-mta[1511]: i07331me001498: SYSERR(root): 
butters.kibserv.org. config error: mail loops back to me (MX problem?)

A bounce message is generated and sends cleanly to postmaster at kibserv.org.  
The original message is removed from the queue...apparently this error is 
fatal to the original message.

my alias file contains the following
root:           root at kibserv.org
seti:           root at kibserv.org
kib:            mgmcomm at hotmail.com
virtualuser:    mgmcomm at hotmail.com

and many other entries...most are the defaults in the original file enabled 
and almost all eventually point to root anyhow.  And yes I have run 
newaliases and received successful and positive response.

10:17am butters:/etc/mail # newaliases
/etc/mail/aliases: 38 aliases, longest 22 bytes, 504 bytes total

This problem seemed to start about the time I upgrades from 4.7 to 5.2.  
Presently I am loosely tracking current...usually up to a month behind with 
a 1 week run on a test box.  I plan to track 5-stable as soon as I see it 
since I am too deep into 5.x features to go back to 4.x now.  Current is not 
really all I bargained for  :)

10:25am butters:/etc/mail # uname -a
FreeBSD butters 5.2-CURRENT FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT #3: Tue Dec 16 19:32:35 UTC 
2003     root at butters:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/CUSTOM  i386

in my rc.conf file I thought maybe my sendmail options were wrong.  
historically I have used:
sendmail_enable="YES"
but after reading the defaults and the rc.sendmail file I find that this 
option is exclusive of two other sendmail options
sendmail_submit_enable and sendmail_outbound_enable

So I tried each in turn with no change in result.  But since I can't find 
much documentation on these other than what I can make from the rc.sendmail 
I might still just be using the wrong rc.conf the wrong way.

It seems to me that sendmail is completely ignoring the /etc/mail/aliases 
file
Even when I try to send mail to kib (a real user) or the virtualuser the 
mail always tries to go to user at host.domain.com...which eventually bounces 
and gets attached to a message to the postmaster.  I suppose the aliases are 
not completely ignored because no mail ever gets to the local user mail 
accounts.

Also note that the kibserv.org is an old domain no longer registered...but 
we still use it for testing purposes.  To prove this is not a dns related 
issue here is a few digs.  Our local dns server has all the correct records.

10:29am butters:/etc/mail # dig kibserv.org mx

; <<>> DiG 8.3 <<>> kibserv.org mx
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 64231
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUERY SECTION:
;;	kibserv.org, type = MX, class = IN

;; ANSWER SECTION:
kibserv.org.		1H IN MX	10 mail.kibserv.org.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
kibserv.org.		1H IN NS	10.0.0.5.

;; Total query time: 2 msec
;; FROM: butters to SERVER: 10.0.0.5
;; WHEN: Sun Jan 11 10:36:51 2004
;; MSG SIZE  sent: 29  rcvd: 72

10:36am butters:/etc/mail #  dig mail.kibserv.org

; <<>> DiG 8.3 <<>> mail.kibserv.org
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 63182
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUERY SECTION:
;;	mail.kibserv.org, type = A, class = IN

;; ANSWER SECTION:
mail.kibserv.org.	1H IN CNAME	stan.kibserv.org.
stan.kibserv.org.	1H IN A		10.0.0.8

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
kibserv.org.		1H IN NS	10.0.0.5.

;; Total query time: 3 msec
;; FROM: butters to SERVER: 10.0.0.5
;; WHEN: Sun Jan 11 10:37:15 2004
;; MSG SIZE  sent: 34  rcvd: 91

10:37am butters:/etc/mail #

Well I can't think of anything else that might apply here.  I hope I didn't 
go into too much detail making this unreadbale.  But I suppose too much is 
better than not enough.

As soon as I can get the mail server to accept these messages I will be 
allowed to roll our domains to this new mail server and I can finally get 
off
hotmail and have a real pop3 account for a change.


And please reply to or cc me as my hotmail account is not on the list 
anymore.  It fills up so fast that the mailing list gets bounded messages 
and drops me every couple days if I don't keep deleting mail.  Its become 
too much of a hassle.

Thanks
Jason Cribbins

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