sendmail: Sending Mail (SMTP)

Support knowledgebase (stark_sendmail)

SuSE Linux: Versions 6.3 to 7.3

Situation:

Procedure:

• This solution model is primarily intended for dial-up connections via ISDN or modem which may require mail address conversion.
• It helps to avoid unnecessary connections by first placing all messages in a queue and then explicitly transmitting all of them in one go.
• In the following lines only the procedure for sending e-mails is described.

Configuration:

The configuration is located in the directory /etc/mail and in the file /etc/rc.config.d/sendmail.rc.config.

Settings in /etc/rc.config:

• SMTP="yes"
• FROM_HEADER="provider.com"
  This entry masks all outgoing mail with @provider.com

Settings in /etc/rc.config.d/sendmail.rc.config:

• SENDMAIL_SMARTHOST="mail.provider.com"
  Your provider's SMTP server.
  
  
• SENDMAIL_LOCALHOST="localhost your.computer.name"
  Mail sent to these domains is distributed locally.
  
  
• SENDMAIL_RELAY=""
  This entry usually remains blank, since otherwise even local mail will first be forwarded to this computer.
  
  
• SENDMAIL_ARGS="-bd -om"
  E-mail will only be sent when you execute sendmail -q.
  
  
• SENDMAIL_EXPENSIVE="yes"
  Should be set to "yes" for dial-up connections.
  
  
• SENDMAIL_NOCANONIFY="yes"
  This entry prevents DNS lookups, provided your provider's SMTP server is listed in /etc/hosts.
  
  
• SENDMAIL_NODNS="no"
  Should only be set to "yes" if NOCANONIFY is not sufficient for blocking DNS queries that cause a connection to be established.
  
  
• SENDMAIL_DIALUP="no"
  This parameter can be used if nothing else works; it definitely prevents any connection from being established, since all mail (including local mail) will exclusively be sent with sendmail -q.
  
  
• SENDMAIL_GENERICS_DOMAIN="your.host.name"
  E-mail messages with this domain part can additionally be changed by the genericstable.
  If, for example, you use pine and the genericstable, you have to insert your local host name here in order to make the address conversion work.
  
  
• SENDMAIL_TYPE="yes"
  If the value is "yes", /etc/sendmail.cf will be created from these entries.
  
  
• MASQUERADE_DOMAINS="mydomain1 mydomain2"
  This parameter was added to /etc/rc.config.d/sendmail.rc.config from Sendmail 8.11.0 on:
  All local domains (SENDMAIL_LOCALHOST) are usually masked with FROM_HEADER.
  If you set any value for this parameter, only these domains will be overwritten.

If your e-mail address with your provider is the same as in your local system, all necessary settings are now complete.
Accordingly, after executing SuSEconfig and restarting sendmail, you can send your e-mail messages through your provider with sendmail -q:
rcsendmail reload

/etc/mail/genericstable:

If you have different user names, you need to modify the file /etc/mail/genericstable.
This file is responsible for rewriting e-mail addresses during the transmission.

The entry should look like this:

localusername	mailaddress@provider.com

Some mail programs such as pine offer the same functionalities as genericstable. However, the procedure with genericstable provides a configuration that is independent from the mail client.

Remarks:

If you want that your e-mail is always sent automatically, please create a file called /etc/ppp/ip-up.local with the following content:

#!/bin/sh

/usr/sbin/sendmail -q &

sendmail: Creating your own /etc/sendmail.cf

fetchmail: Collecting Mail from the Provider

Modify sender address and/or domainname