Help with smart host please

[Kevin Miller]

Ah.  In my setup, I'm not using smarthost, but I notice one thing on yours.
You say:
  # "Smart" relay host (may be null)
  DStalia.elknet.net
with no white space between the DS and the domain name.  I don't know if you
need white space there or not, but maybe that's what's hosing it?

My MS machine catches all mail for my domain and also acts as a secondary
for another couple of domains.  I use mailertable with entries such as the
following:

  ci.juneau.ak.us         esmtp:[192.168.55.120]
  etc...

Also, in my relay-domains table I have:
  ci.juneau.ak.us
  mail.ci.juneau.ak.us
  etc...

A post a couple days ago said this: "I'm not sure if this is what you were
talking about, but with the sendmail mailertable, you can list the
destination via IP address.  If you want the mailertable to send to the
specified server regardless of it's MX record, you can put the destination
address in [] brackets to avoid MX lookups."

If you use mailertable you'll have to turn it on in sendmail.cf, and be sure
to do the "makemap hash mailertable < mailertable" routine so that it gets
compiled into the db.

Hope that all makes sense and helps...

...Kevin
-------------------
Kevin Miller                Registered Linux User No: 307357
CBJ MIS Dept.               Network Systems Administrator, Mail
Administrator
155 South Seward Street     ph: (907) 586-0242
Juneau, Alaska 99801        fax: (907 586-4500


>-----Original Message-----
>From: Alan Fiebig [mailto:mailscanner at ELKNET.NET]
>Sent: Friday, September 19, 2003 1:12 PM
>To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
>Subject: Re: Help with smart host please
>
>
>No, sorry, I should have been clearer.
>
>Its not that my MS server is timing out on DNS lookups of my
>smarthost, its that sendmail on my MS server is still
>bothering to lookup the final destination.
>
>
>For example, lets say that I have a message in
>/var/spool/mqueue that is to be delivered to
>'sam at cucumber.org'. As I have sendmail on my MS server
>configured to use a smarthost, sendmail should then just
>blindly forward that message to the smarthost
>(talia.elknet.net) and let the smarthost firgure out how to
>get the message to the 'cucumber.org' smtp server.
>
>But, that's not what's happening. Sendmail on my MS server
>instead is bothering to do a DNS lookup on 'cucumber.org'
>BEFORE sending it on to the smarthost. If the DNS lookup fails
>or timesout, then sendmail deferrs the delivery to the
>smarthost and keeps the message in the queue. Sendmail WILL
>NOT forward the message on to the smarthost until AFTER it has
>successfully looked up the destination domain, then it sends
>it on to the smarthost.
>
>When using a smarthost, my outbound queue should be virtually
>empty. MS should place a message into the mqueue, and within
>seconds sendmail should grab it and send it on to the
>smarthost. But that's not happening, instead, only the message
>that snedmail successfully does a DNS lookup on are being
>forwarded, the rest are sitting in the queue deferred until a
>future time, when sendmail will again try and do a DNS lookup.
>
>Thanks,
>-Alan
>
>
>>I'm probably missing something here, but I'd just add the
>smarthost to the
>>DNS if you're timing out.  Wouldn't that do it?
>>
>>...Kevin
>