On Monday 08 April 2002 12:54 pm, Robert P. Goldman wrote:
> I'm trying to set up a central sendmail server for my home network.
> To a first approximation, what I want is just a place that will catch
> all the mail for 'root' and for crontab users, from two or three
> boxen, so that I only have to sit down at one box to get updates on
> the situation.
>
> I can't seem to find any FM to R for this task --- most seem to be
> aimed at either (a) sendmail for a single box with envelope
> masquerading or (b) sendmail for a box exposed to the internet doing
> general email service.
>
> I'm stumbling along, but keep getting the following errors when
> subsidiary boxen send email to the mail server:
>
>
> Mar 29 09:13:13 cthulhu sendmail[20590]: NOQUEUE: nyarlathotep
> [192.168.0.14] did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA
>
> the subsidiary box, nyarlathotep, is sending mail through mailx, the
> lightweight mailer that you get by default in Mandrake (both boxen are
> Mandrake 8.1).  Does anybody know if this mailer does something
> deviant with smtp?  Or is there perhaps some handshaking that's
> blocked by tcpwrappers on nyarlathotep?  Or, is this a problem because
> I don't have DNS on my subnet, and DNS lookup doesn't work to
> authenticate nyarlathotep?  I'm having a hard time even figuring out
> how to troubleshoot this and, as I said, my googling doesn't seem to
> help.
>
> Thanks,
> R
>
> P.S.  I have considered changing to qmail or postfix, but that seems
> like a big mess of additional cost, when the sendmail solution almost
> works.

I'm not sure about that latter.  As I understand it, the default mail server 
in Mandrake *is* postfix, with a frontend that simulates sendmail commands.  

"man sendmail" comes back with:

NAME
       sendmail - Postfix to Sendmail compatibility interface

SYNOPSIS
       sendmail [option ...] [recipient ...]

       mailq
       sendmail -bp

       newaliases
       sendmail -I

DESCRIPTION
       The  sendmail  program  implements the Postfix to Sendmail
       compatibility interface.  For the  sake  of  compatibility
       with  existing  applications,  some  Sendmail command-line
       options are recognized but silently ignored.
       sendmail - Postfix to Sendmail compatibility interface


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There's a widow in sleepy Chester
  Who weeps for her only son;
There's a grave on the Pabeng River,
  A grave that the Burmans shun,
And there's Subadar Prag Tewarri
  Who tells how the work was done.
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