sendmail: Cannot open mail:25

[su root]

I know I've solved this before, but I just don't remember how.

/usr/sbin/sendmail is linked to ssmtp, and any time I try to send an email with it, it just fires up this message:

sendmail: Cannot open mail:25

I have two boxes with relatively similar configs, one works, one doesn't. Just tried remerging it, with no change.

Linux 2.4.20-gentoo-r6 #2 i586 Pentium MMX GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

 

[injinj]

netstat -l should show:

Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
...
tcp 0 0 *:smtp *:* LISTEN
...

If not, there is no smtp server running. I'd guess that sendmail is bailing when the machine boots.

 

[su root]

Thanks for the reply.

however, this server isn't running a sendmail daemon, it's running ssmtp, which is a simple, localhost-only outgoing-only smtp engine.

I'm trying to send email across the internet (which works perfectly fine on my other linux box, which apparently has the same configuration in /etc/ssmtp/ssmtp.conf).

 

[injinj]

Hrmm. Sounds like a config file permissions thing then. strace say anything?

 

[su root]

I tried running it as root, gave the same error, so it's not a permissions problem. Could still be a misconfiguration.

strace doesn't show anything, as far as I can read it, here it is (the important parts, anyway).

 

[injinj]

I tried running it as root, gave the same error, so it's not a permissions problem. Could still be a misconfiguration.

strace doesn't show anything, as far as I can read it, here it is (the important parts, anyway).

Looks like it's failing because of a DNS lookup for "mail" at 10.10.220.1. I'm not sure how the ssmtp protocol works. It may be that setting "mail" to 127.0.0.1 in /etc/hosts will do it.

 

[su root]

I was sending to an address @mail.com
There is nothing besides loopback in hosts
10.10.220.1 is my router box / dns cache (functioning properly, afaik)

I've tried with other email addresses, they all fail. Tried putting a "mail" to localhost entry in hosts, no effect.

AFAIK, ssmtp is basically a very cutback version of sendmail. Someone just grabbed an axe, and hacked out all the bits that would make it insecure, leaving an outgoing-only, localhost-only SMTP engine, which should allow outgoing messages.

 

[su root]

got it working.

the "mailhub" config property wasn't working.
for some reason, my gateway box was resolving "mail" properly for itself, but wasn't resolving it for others to use.

Oh well, it's working now.. thanks

 

[injinj]

woot!