sendmail stalling during boot

[Simon Morgan]

When my system boots it freezes for an extremely long time at a certain
point in the boot process. Hitting CTRL-C at this point I'm informed
that the loading of sendmail has been cancelled which obviously indicates
that it's what is responsible.

Looking into the issue I've seen a number of people experiencing the same
problem and being told to fix their DNS setup. The machine that sendmail
is running on has an internet routable IP that resolves to a hostname:

> host 82.71.120.75
75.120.71.82.in-addr.arpa domain name pointer
82-71-120-75.dsl.in-addr.zen.co.uk.

but the hostname I have set is "fake" and resolves to nothing:

> hostname
naboo.localdomain
> host naboo.localdomain
Host naboo.localdomain not found: 3(NXDOMAIN)

However, it does so almost instantly and so I fail to see what is causing
sendmail to hang.

Can anybody help? I would appreciate a CC on any replies as I'm not
subscribed to the list.

Thanks.