On Tue, 24 Dec 2002, [iso-8859-1] Philip Christian wrote:

> localhost sendmail [135]: My unqualified hostname (localhost) unknown;
> sleeping for retry
>
> then
>
> localhost sendmail [135]: Unable to qualify my own domain name
> (localhost) -- using shortname

Give your system a real name; see /etc/myname and see hostname(1) manual
page. (Or see rc.conf manual page.)

And then make sure it is in your /etc/hosts too.

Or modify your sendmail config. See "WHO AM I?" in
/usr/share/sendmail/README. An example to base it on is at
/usr/share/sendmail/cf/netbsd-proto.mc. Also read "INTRODUCTION AND
EXAMPLE" in the README.

> Do I really need sendmail? how did it get there? what starts it going?
> can I get rid of it?

Many tools send mail, like cron, daily reports, daily security checks,
etc. So you do need some type of mailer.

A daemon is started via /etc/rc. See rc.conf man page for "sendmail".

An alternative already included is postfix. (Also, I have been slowly
working on an alternative mailer, mailout, for a couple years which I use
on a few systems.)

Good luck,

   Jeremy C. Reed
   http://bsd.reedmedia.net/