Sendmail weirdness with 5.3 Beta2

[epf1 at cec.wustl.edu]

> On Fri, 2004-09-03 at 14:29, epf1 at cec.wustl.edu wrote:
>> I am having an odd problem with sendmail on a FreeBSD 5.3 Beta2 box that
>> has been updated from 5.2.1.
>>
>> Here is the problem. I have a .forward set up for root that sends
>> the mail from the periodic scripts on to a "real" account.
>>
>> Right now it doesn't work. It errors out with the following message from
>> mailq:
>>
>> Deferred: Name server: mail.mailserver.com.: host name lookup failure
>>
>> What is odd is this .forward worked before I updated the box to 5.3, and
>> the same account and setup still works for the other 3 unix boxes in the
>> basement. If I change the .forward on the broken box to point to my
>> gmail
>> account the mail goes right through.
>>
>> Any ideas out there on what might have changed with sendmail between
>> 5.2.1
>> and 5.3 Beta2?
>
> seems like an odd way to do it. I've moved to postfix from sendmail, but
> i would set up an alias, unless there is a specific reason you are using
> a .forward. Since that 'mail.mailserver.com' seems like a placeholder, I
> would do a grep for that in your configs. I would imagine that would
> give some light.
>
> if you are unfamiliar w/ aliases, here's an example:
>
> root:		admin at domain.com
>
> where all mail for the user root wll be sent to admin at domain.com
>
>
> --
> Nicholas Bernstein, Unix Systems Administrator
> Document Systems Inc.
> http://docmagic.com
> nick at docmagic.com
>
>
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>

Indeed, the .forward that might seem like an odd way to do it, but it has
worked for me for years...it's real simple to do to and what's really nice
is there is no config needed to make it work!

What strikes me as really odd about this are 2 things. First this setup
was working 2 days ago before I went from FreeBSD 5.2.1 to 5.3 Beta2. The
other thing is that the 3 other boxes in the basement (2 OpenBSD & 1 Free)
are still functioning just fine with the .forward in place. If I change
the address in the .forward to my gmail account things work just fine on
the Free 5.3 box.

-Will