(Ted Harding) wrote:

On 15-Oct-04 Don Parris wrote:

...

Well gang, I've got a few boxes running SUSE 8.0 Pro. I would like to be able to send mail between hosts on the LAN, which is not connected to the outside world. The Yast Mail module didn't do anything that I can tell. At leasat I don't get e-mail between hosts. Having viewed the READMEs and other documentation, I think I'm more confused than enlightened.

I'm using a hosts file - not a DNS server. (I know that sendmail can use a "well-formed" hosts file.)

You may need to probe a bit to get to the bottom of what's wrong. Sendmail should work fine on a LAN (there can be complications if you also mail to the outside world, e.g. via dial-up: you may then need to explicitly despatch the outgoing mail using a modified sendmail.cf file so as to masquerade your sending machine).

As a first test, try seeing of you can send mail between your local machines using explicit IP addresses.

Suppose (but modifiy the IP addresses to match your local setup) you have three machines whose IP addresses are

192.168.0.1 192.168.0.2 192.168.0.3

and you are sitting at [1] and want to send a message to user "don" at [2]. Then, when entering the "To:" destination address, enter

don@[192.168.0.2]

(note the square brackets). If it goes through, then sendmail is doing its job and also [2] is accepting SMTP connections.

Well, I hadn't though of using the IP address (and wouldn't have known to add the brackets, either). Anyway, that works. /var/log/mail shows a hostname lookup failure where I used the domain name instead. So how do I use the domain name instead of the IP addresses? Is this where I need to add the host names in /etc/mail/local-host-names? -- DC Parris http://matheteuo.org/ http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/ "Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime anywhere."

(Ted Harding) wrote:

<SNIP>

I'd suggest setting these in the /etc/hosts file which should look like

127.0.0.1 localhost lh 192.168.0.1 mach1.dons.dom.ain mach1 m1 192.168.0.2 mach2.dons.dom.ain mach2 m2 192.168.0.3 mach3.dons.dom.ain mach3 m3

and so on.

My hosts file looks more like: 127.0.0.1 localhost lh 192.168.0.1 mach1.dom.ain mach1 192.168.0.2 mach2.dom.ain mach2 192.168.0.3 mach3.dom.ain mach3 My /etc/hosts.conf is the same. I am attempting to send e-mail as - To: user2@mach2.dom.ain And therein is where my problem likely lies. I need to rename the domain, so that the domain name is something like dons.dom.ain, instead of dom.ain. Would that be correct? Don

Also, make sure that in /etc/host.conf you have the lines

order hosts bind multi on

Your machine should then look up name-to-IP translations by first looking in /etc/hosts and only then, if this fails, by attempting to find another nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf

*Note* that /etc/host.conf can get re-written by SuSEConfig.

In /etc/hosts, the first field is of course the IP address of a machine, the second is its full name (FQDN), and the rest are abbreviations ("nicknames") which you should be able to use locally.

E.g.

telnet m2

should initiate a telnet connection to 192.168.0.2

(I'm a bit of a freak for very short names. For instance, I've made an alias "tl" for "telnet", so "tl lh" is a telnet to localhost. Likewise, I have a nickname "ns" in /etc/hosts for my external mail host nessie.mcc.ac.uk, so when online I can do "tl ns". Etc.)

Hoping this breaks the final barrier! Ted.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 [NB: New number!] Date: 15-Oct-04 Time: 18:05:28 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

-- DC Parris http://matheteuo.org/ http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/ "Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime anywhere."

(Ted Harding) wrote:

On 16-Oct-04 Don Parris wrote:

...

(Ted Harding) wrote:

...

I'd suggest setting these in the /etc/hosts file which should look like

127.0.0.1 localhost lh 192.168.0.1 mach1.dons.dom.ain mach1 m1 192.168.0.2 mach2.dons.dom.ain mach2 m2 192.168.0.3 mach3.dons.dom.ain mach3 m3

and so on.

My hosts file looks more like:

127.0.0.1 localhost lh 192.168.0.1 mach1.dom.ain mach1 192.168.0.2 mach2.dom.ain mach2 192.168.0.3 mach3.dom.ain mach3

My /etc/hosts.conf is the same.

I am attempting to send e-mail as - To: user2@mach2.dom.ain

And therein is where my problem likely lies. I need to rename the domain, so that the domain name is something like dons.dom.ain, instead of dom.ain. Would that be correct?

I don't think there should be a problem about the number of components in your machine names so long as there are at least two: one for the individual machine (the first) and the rest to designate the domain that the different machines belong to.

When you wrote "/etc/hosts.conf", was this correct? This is not a standard file in the DNS system. There is (or should be) a file "/etc/host.conf". However, if /etc/host.conf is what you meant, then I'm concerned that you say this "is the same" (?as /etc/hosts?).

Sorry about that. I meant /etc/hosts. Not sure why I put the ".conf" in there. I have changed my hosts file to match your scheme. The host.conf file is correctly configured (same as what you suggested).

/etc/hosts and /etc/host.conf files. When you send mail from [1] to [2], [2] may carry out a "reverse DNS lookup" on the "From: " address in the mail, in order to check that the mail is coming from a valid source (anti-spoofing and anti-relay precaution). If [2] can't find [1]'s IP address in its /etc/hosts (or however it looks it up) then you could get mail rejected. So each machine you mail from would need to be findable by each machine on your LAN that you mail to.

However, this probably doesn't apply in your case since apparently you can mail to an IP address. So it's more likely to be a case of destination machine-name not translating to IP address on the sending machine.

I'll nose around some more. -- DC Parris http://matheteuo.org/ http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/ "Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime anywhere."

By the way, Ted, I'm seeing double when you post. When you post, a duplicate accompanies your original for some odd reason (both have same timestamp). I assume you're seeing the same thing. Just thought you might want to look into it. ;) -- DC Parris http://matheteuo.org/ http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/ "Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime anywhere."

Don,

On Friday 15 October 2004 21:16, Don Parris wrote:

...

By the way, Ted, I'm seeing double when you post. When you post, a duplicate accompanies your original for some odd reason (both have same timestamp). I assume you're seeing the same thing. Just thought you might want to look into it. ;)

That's surely because he's sending one copy to the SuSE-Linux-E list and one directly to you (check the headers). We out here see only one post from Ted.

Oops - sorry Randall: replied to the poster by mistake (again) Anyway, sometimes, this can be due to a duplicated filter in the mail client. David

Mike McMullin wrote:

On Fri, 2004-10-15 at 23:16, Don Parris wrote:

...

By the way, Ted, I'm seeing double when you post. When you post, a duplicate accompanies your original for some odd reason (both have same timestamp). I assume you're seeing the same thing. Just thought you might want to look into it. ;)

-- DC Parris http://matheteuo.org/ http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/ "Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime anywhere."

I'm not seeing any dupes here Don.

Mike

Yeah, I'm just getting a carbon copy. No biggie, just thought I'd point it out. Y'all know I accidentally do that sometimes myself. -- DC Parris http://matheteuo.org/ http://chaddb.sourceforge.net/ "Free software is like God's love - you can share it with anyone anytime anywhere."