How to make sendmail listen on an address other than the loopback

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On 2007-12-28 10:33, Andrew Falanga <af300wsm at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm trying to get an e-mail system working for my church
> (whitneybaptist.org).  I've added a file called local-host-names in
> /etc/mail as described in the Handbook, then did "/etc/rc.d/sendmail
> restart" and then did "sockstat | grep sendmail" and got the following
> results:
> 
> root     sendmail   32889 3  tcp4   127.0.0.1:25          *:*
> root     sendmail   32889 4  dgram  -> /var/run/logpriv
> smmsp    sendmail   696   3  dgram  -> /var/run/log
> 
> Now, with the exception of the additional file, nothing has been done
> to this stock sendmail configuration (system is 6.2-RELEASE-p7).  How
> would I make sendmail listen on the ip of 192.168.2.23?  I do have
> some experience with sendmail, however, it was several years ago and
> I've forgotten quite a bit.  Why isn't it listening on that address
> now?

What you see is `normal' for a host which supports local email delivery
and forwards everything else to another `smart host'.  If you want to
start a listener which also accepts email from the network (instead of a
listener only for 127.0.0.1 like the one you have now), you will have to
tweak the `sendmail_xxx_enable' options in your `/etc/rc.conf' file.

Right now, you probably have something like:

  sendmail_enable="NO"
  sendmail_submit_enable="YES"
  sendmail_msp_queue_enable="YES"

To run the sendmail daemon for inbound email connections on all network
interfaces, you need sendmail_enable="YES", and then you can drop the
line for the `submit' daemon:

  sendmail_enable="YES"
  sendmail_msp_queue_enable="YES"

Note: For more details about these `rc.conf' variables, it may be useful
to read the rc.sendmail(5) manpage.