Topic: sendmail --> qmail as relay

[Scott Smith]

Hi, everyone. Put your email hats on!

I have an SGI Irix system running sendmail, which is configured to forward mail to my e-smith system, which it uses as a relay. This is working, with the following snag.

The application on the SGI system calls sendmail as follows:

     /usr/lib/sendmail -t < message.file

Works like a charm. The headers From/To/Subject/etc are all read from the message.file complements of the -t option.

Now, and here is where the snag is, if the e-smith server is offline (it is dial-up) then sendmail will wait (which appears to the users as a hang) until e-smith gets connected.

I would have thought qmail (e-smith) would have queued the message and that sendmail (SGI) would have released immediately.

Any ideas whether I should be looking for a qmail setting or a sendmail setting? We need sendmail to relay the message to qmail and then return immediately, without waiting for qmail to connect/deliver.

BTW, there are no user accounts on the e-smith server. It is running simply as a gateway and as a mail forwarder.

TIA

Scott

[Charlie Brady]

Scott Smith wrote:

> The application on the SGI system calls sendmail as follows:
>
> /usr/lib/sendmail -t < message.file
>
> Works like a charm. The headers From/To/Subject/etc are all
> read from the message.file complements of the -t option.
>
> Now, and here is where the snag is, if the e-smith server is
> offline (it is dial-up) then sendmail will wait (which appears
> to the users as a hang) until e-smith gets connected.
...
> Any ideas whether I should be looking for a qmail setting or a
> sendmail setting? We need sendmail to relay the message to
> qmail and then return immediately, without waiting for
> qmail to connect/deliver.

Your problem is with sendmail on Irix, not with qmail or with e-smith. Check sendmail options to queue messages immediately, and check options to tell sendmail not to use DNS to verify addresses. It's the lack of DNS infor for sendmail that's slowing things down, not anything to do with qmail.

regards

Charlie

[Scott Smith]

Charlie

Thanks for the feedback. I was already leaning that direction (one of these days I'll get a handle on all this sendmail / qmail stuff!)

As it turns out, we are using sendmail V8.6 and prior to V8.8 (according to the bat book) the only way to disable DNS is at compile time. There are no command line or .cf options Also, the Oddeferred option is not available in V8.6 either.

Why not upgrade? Because we have several thousand systems in the field, so I am being force to stick with 8.6. Yuk!

Oh well, there's always a way! Back to the drawing board...

Thanks again!

Scott