Subject: Re: new sendmail spooling and dns
To: Steven M. Bellovin <smb@research.att.com>
From: Thomas Miller <tmiller@flex.com>
List: current-users
Date: 03/31/2003 21:53:00
> It's been a long time since I've used sendmail, but 'sendmail -q'
> is (according to the man page) the way to attempt delivery of each 
> queued message.

>		--Steve Bellovin, http://www.research.att.com/~smb (me)
>		http://www.wilyhacker.com (2nd edition of "Firewalls" book)

Hi Steve,

Sendmail -q seems to work fine respecting the mail in 
/var/spool/mqueue.  But it doesn't move the mail in 
/var/spool/clientmqueue.  If DNS lookup has been 
deferred on the mail in clientmqueue it looks like 
that mail hangs in clientmqueue until the queue 
runner gets around to trying the DNS lookup again.  

So, if one is using a modem and composing off line,
it seems one needs a way to make the DNS lookup 
happen and move the mail from clientmqueue into 
mqueue or else send the mail directly out of 
clientmqueue.  

After reading the sendmail man page, I tried 

# sendmail -Ac -q -v

which seemed to work (or else the queue runner 
woke up by itself about the same time, or else 
the mail was sent because of some other reason).  
I'll try "sendmail -Ac -q -v" again with this 
message. . . . 

Thanks again to everyone who has tried to help 
me with this problem.  It's just wonderful to 
receive such generous and courteous assistance.  

Kindest regards,

Tom