sendmail init error: Can't assign requested address

Ernest Sales ersaloz at gmail.com
Mon May 14 21:25:44 UTC 2007


On Monday, May 14, 2007 3:15 AM, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote:
> 
> On May 13, 2007, at 5:07 PM, Ernest Sales wrote:
> 
> > A laptop running 6-STABLE is connected to the Internet thru a DSL
> > modem-router doing NAT. It gets a dynamic local IP (fairly recurring
> > 192.168.1.33) at every boot. Of course there is no FQDN for 
> this host.
> 
> I'm not entirely sure if this will solve your problem but you 
> can set  
> up a FQDN for that IP without causing any conflicts.  If you have a  
> "public" domain name, say, yourdomain.com than you could set up a  
> subdomain
> 
>    private.yourdomain.com

I crafted it a little different. Now /etc/hosts reads:

::1                     asinusaureus asinusaureus.localhost localhost
127.0.0.1               asinusaureus asinusaureus.localhost localhost

Sendmail starts smoothly:

[...]
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sshd_enable is set to NO.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sendmail_enable is set to NO.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sendmail_submit_enable is set to YES.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sendmail_enable is set to NO.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sendmail_submit_enable is set to YES.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sendmail_submit_enable is set to YES.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: pid file (/var/run/sendmail.pid): not readable.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: run_rc_command: evaluating sendmail_precmd().
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sendmail_submit_enable is set to YES.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: run_rc_command: evaluating /usr/sbin/sendmail -L sm-mta -bd
-q30
m -ODaemonPortOptions=Addr=localhost().
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sendmail_outbound_enable is set to NO.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sendmail_msp_queue_enable is set to YES.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: pid file (/var/spool/clientmqueue/sm-client.pid): not
readable.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: run_rc_command: evaluating sendmail_precmd().
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: sendmail_msp_queue_enable is set to YES.
/etc/rc: DEBUG: run_rc_command: evaluating /usr/sbin/sendmail -L
sm-msp-queue -A
c -q30m().
/etc/rc: DEBUG: checkyesno: cron_dst is set to YES.
[...]

Well, actually not so (sendmail_outbound_enable is supposed to be set to
YES, as per defaults, but init says otherwise -- and I don't know what that
means). But it starts without delays and can send/receive mail (even
internet mail, wow!).

I chose .localhost to qualify the hostname because the notion of "public"
domain name is where I get lost. Can I pick any word as TLD/SLD to operate
in a private LAN? Is there any standard, anything like the CIDR blocks
reserved for private networks? Researchs led me to RFC 2606, alternative DNS
roots, and the like, but I couldn't distill any practical advice. Which will
be the interactions if I choose e.g. .somedomain.com? Now if I send a mail
to the internet, it has a From field (user at hostname) unusable to reply to;
if this was user at hostname.somedomain.com it could fake some real mail
address. 

These are questions for the sake of correcteness. I rather won't get into
the arcanes of sendmail, but as it is part of base and used for admin
purposes, would like to set it up properly. As for the real email stuff,
will be dealt from the GUI some day; but there is always the chance of a guy
playing with the CLI.

> 
> and locally run your own DNS server to serve for that domain, and to  
> forward DNS requests for all other domains.  You can also make that  
> some local DNS server do reverse lookups in 192.168.0.0/16 without  
> worries as long as DNS queries are only coming from within 
> your local  
> network.

Maybe in the future. At present there is only this laptop in the LAN -- the
LAN is just the way to connect with the modem-router. Some day there will be
more inhabitants, however, so I would like to set up a schema able to
encompass the growth.

> 
> Also, try to configure your DHCP server (on your modem-router) to  
> always give the same IP address to your laptop (you can do this by  
> associating an IP with the hardware ethernet (or wireless) 
> MAC address.

You mean the local IP, I suppose. Not checked yet...

> 
> -j
> 
> 
> -- 
> Jeffrey Goldberg                        http://www.goldmark.org/jeff/

Thanks for your help.

Ernest



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