wrong SMART_HOST?

[Simon Morris]

I'm trying to set up sendmail 8.11.5 on Solaris 2.4.
I have

define(`SMART_HOST',`post.demon.co.uk')

in my .mc file, and hence

DSpost.demon.co.uk

in my .cf file. This machine is the one my ISP provides
for me to send email to. But when I try to send email,
I get an email back from my ISP quoting an SMTP dialogue
with punt-1.mail.demon.net, which is the machine that
my ISP uses to send me email. I am not supposed to try
to send email to this machine, so the dialogue describes
a failure.

There is no "punt" in my .cf or .mc file, so how have I
managed to start such an SMTP dialogue?

Alternatively, does anyone know which debug option(s)
I should turn up to get more information about what
sendmail is doing here?

Thanks,

S.

[Valentin Nechayev]

>>> Simon Morris wrote:

SM> I'm trying to set up sendmail 8.11.5 on Solaris 2.4.
SM> I have
SM> define(`SMART_HOST',`post.demon.co.uk')

define(`SMART_HOST',`[post.demon.co.uk]')

otherwise it use MX'es for post.demon.co.uk

/netch

[Simon Morris]

That was the problem, thanks.

S.

[John F Hall]

In article <3B7A4F...@iptech.demon.co.uk>,

Simon Morris <sim...@iptech.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>I'm trying to set up sendmail 8.11.5 on Solaris 2.4.
>I have
>
>define(`SMART_HOST',`post.demon.co.uk')
>
>in my .mc file, and hence
>
>DSpost.demon.co.uk
>
>in my .cf file. This machine is the one my ISP provides
>for me to send email to. But when I try to send email,
>I get an email back from my ISP quoting an SMTP dialogue
>with punt-1.mail.demon.net, which is the machine that
>my ISP uses to send me email. I am not supposed to try
>to send email to this machine, so the dialogue describes
>a failure.

As has been said you need to use brackets to suppress MX lookups.

However as you have a static IP address you might like to consider the
alternative of using "define(`confFALLBACK_MX',`[post.demon.co.uk]')dnl".

That has the effect of first attempting direct connection and only
using the Demon smarthost when the direct connection can't be made.
(The brackets aren't strictly needed yet but they will be with sendmail
8.12, so it's best to use them.)

That way you avoid problems if any of the other 200,000 sites feeding
through Demon's smarthost are misconfigured and cause it to get into
blacklists as happens from time to time --- including now :-(.

If you find any destinations that don't want direct connections -
which shouldn't happen as static IP addresses don't qualify for the DUL
list - or if direct delivery is slow or erratic, you should enter them
in mailertable as "destination.site smtp:[post.demon.co.uk]" to force
smarthost delivery.

Presumably "destination.site smtp:destination.site" (without brackets)
in mailertable will have to opposite effect of forcing direct delivery
if you normally do use the smarthost - though I've not tried that myself
nor decoded the ruleset to see exactly what the effect would be.

Finally note that "post.demon.co.uk" is a CNAME for "post.mail.demon.net"
and using the latter name avoids any problems due to the wildcard MX
for demon.co.uk - though it's still advisable to put it in brackets to
ensure your delivery does go there.

Assuming you are a dialup rather than a leased line or ADSL, you also
need:

define(`confCON_EXPENSIVE',`True')dnl
define(`SMTP_MAILER_FLAGS',`e')dnl

to force outgoing mail to be queued - and to use "sendmail -q"
appropriately, either in ip-up or in crontab (if you want to use diald).
I also have "/usr/bin/sendmail -qRavondale" in crontab in case any local
mail gets queued.

You also need "HasWildcardMX" for Demon - I use
"define(`confBIND_OPTS',`HasWildcardMX -DNSRCH -DEFNAMES')dnl"

--
John F Hall