Sendmail not working, nightmare!

Sendmail will not send email outside server

[The_Warden]

Hi. I'm running OpenBSD 3.3 i386. Fresh install with just a few added packages and sources. Samba, Ghostscript, bash, ntp, png and PHP 4.3.3 (complied by source). I've done some configuring to BIND DNS server and Samba. But as a whole the system is fresh and in place.

Here's the deal I can not seem to send out e-mail. I get this error message in /var/maillog/.

"Host unknown (Name server: domainnamehere: no data known)
DSN: Host unknown (Name server: domainnamehere.com: no data known)"

Now everything seems to work fine. I've been using my one machine for my primary and only DNS. The only other problem I've come accross on the system is in the logs of /var/www/logs/error_log I get " httpd: Could not determine the server's fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.0.1 for ServerName". I would love to resolve that as well if anyone can help me out. One more thing, I have reset my hosts.allow to "all:all" and hosts.deny is empty. Any more information needed let me know.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

[marcs]

"Host unknown (Name server: domainnamehere: no data known)
DSN: Host unknown (Name server: domainnamehere.com: no data known)"

Try creating an entry in /etc/hosts for domainnamehere and restart sendmail and see if that changes anything.

If the domainnamehere is the same you have set in httpd.conf then that may correct the Apache issue too.

[bakedjake]

Logon to an ISP connection independent of your current network connection. Do an nslookup/dig/dnsip on the hostname. If it returns a host not found or an NXDOMAIN, you've got a DNS problem somewhere in the chain.

It sounds like sendmail/apache can't resolve the name of your host, so I'm betting this is the problem. You may want to also check /etc/resolv.conf and make sure your caching nameserver(s) are specified properly.

[The_Warden]

marcs

Mmm.. already have an entry. But this server I'm setting up is to be the new DNS server and virtual PDF printer (only using sendmail to e-mail out printed PDFs). Currently another one is running on the network. My work station uses the new server only for a DNS.

bakedjake

As mentioned above this new server is to be used for our DNS and virtual PDF printer. Would this be causing the problem by having another DNS server running? Shouldn't be. I'm not overall familiar with BIND or Sendmail for that matter. Currently, I do not think anyone outside of my network knows about this new server. See I have to set it up get it working and then change IP address / name of the machine before deployment.

Man so lost and confused.

[bakedjake]

See I have to set it up get it working and then change IP address / name of the machine before deployment.

Can you elaborate a bit on what your current setup is? It sounds like you have a live DNS server, another live virtual PDF/mail server, then this test all-in-one-box that you're working on.

Is that what we're dealing with? If so, it sounds like your test machine is trying to resolve its current hostname, but can't. Put an entry in your DNS for it: test.whatever.com. You can change it when you go live.

[The_Warden]

The server is intended to service,

1. Primary DNS.
2. Virtual PDF priter requires: Samba, ghostscript and Sendmail (outgoing only).
3. To merge PDFs into one, requires: Apache, PHP, ghostscript and Sendmail (outgoing only).

There is not a lot of this machine.

The idea of the virtual PDF printer is to allow anyone on our network to print any type of document and have it saved as PDF then e-mailed off to that paticular individual.

The server is in setup stage and will be deployed for production use, no testing would be done on that paticular server. As I mentioned before once the server setup is complete the server's IP address and name would change for deployment, replacing old Primary DNS server.

That's all.

BTW, I already have a DNS entry for the server, athena.mydomain.com.