receiving mail

[Chuck Swiger]

On Jan 13, 2009, at 11:51 PM, Pieter Donche wrote:
> on host1:
> $ host -t MX macos.cmi.ua.ac.be
> returns no answer

It is recommended to configure MX records for the domains in DNS, but  
mail will fall back to using A records if no MX records exist.

> But, when I try from host1
> $ telnet host2.domain.topdom 25
>
> Trying 143.129.75.1...
> telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
>
> Op host2.domain.topdom I see sendmail is running:
> host2: $ ps -jaxw | grep sendm
> smmsp   816     1   816   816    0 Is    ??    0:00.02 sendmail:  
> Queue runner at 00:30:00 for /var/spool/clientmqueue (sendmail)
> root    812     1   812   812    0 Ss    ??    0:00.01 sendmail:  
> accepting connections (sendmail)
>
> What's wrong? Why does this not work out of the box ??


Given the security history of sendmail, it's not prudent to enable  
sendmail by default.  Those two processes are the client mqueue runner  
and probably a daemon listening only on localhost rather than on all  
interfaces.

There is a minimum level of effort required to set up mail properly;  
at the least, read /etc/mail/README and set:

   sendmail_enable="YES"

...in /etc/rc.conf.  I expect to deal with sendmail for as long as I  
administer Unix boxes, but alternatives like Postfix in particular  
would be my preference from a number of standpoints.

Regards,
-- 
-Chuck