On 15-Oct-04 Don Parris wrote:
(Ted Harding) wrote:
On 15-Oct-04 Don Parris wrote:
[...] I'm using a hosts file - not a DNS server. (I know that sendmail can use a "well-formed" hosts file.)
[...] 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?
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.
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.
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E-Mail: (Ted Harding)