Re: Configuring Sendmail under Solaris 9 to relay

From: Richard B. Gilbert (rgilbert88_at_comcast.net)
Date: 03/27/04 

Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 14:37:27 -0500

Dennis McCunney wrote:

> Okay, dumb question time.
>
> I have a pair of Sunfile v480s running Solaris 9. I have production
> applications running on them that email daily reports to a variety of
> people. Sendmail passes the mail to a Microsoft Exchange Server,
> which then does the email to the recipients.
>
> This works fine for people in the corporate domain. It fails with a
> Relay Denied error for folks outside the company, and unfortunately,
> there are a few of those who must get the emailed reports. At first,
> I thought it was an Exchange Server issue, but it appears to be a
> configuration issue in Sendmail.
>
> I'm a reasonbably capable Unix admin, but this is the first time I've
> had to dig into Sendmail, and I'm a bit confused. I checked the docs
> at Sendmail.org, and several other sites found via Google. I've
> created relay-domains in /etc/mail. What *isn't* clear to me is what,
> exactly, should be in there. Should this contain the domains for my
> company, or the domains for the intended recipients? If the latter,
> I'll deal, but be unhappy -- the list of folks outside the company
> that might need to get mail from the Sunfires is fluid and subject to
> change.
>
> Is there a way to tell Sendmail "It's okay to pass mail that will be
> forwarded outside the corporate domain" without having to specify the
> destinations? How should I approach this?
>
> Thanks in advance!
> ______
> Dennis
> dmccunney at roperasw dot com

I've never worked with Exchange and what I know about Sendmail I could
write on my thumbnail in 14pt type.

Having said that, my first guess would be that Exchange may be refusing
to relay the mail. SMTP relay is one of the tools used by spammers to
send their garbage! If your Exchange Server's domain is "abc.com" and
someone at "def.com" sends it mail adddressed to "ghi.com" it should
almost certainly refuse to relay the mail.

So, if Sendmail is using a different domain than your Exchange server,
that could cause problems.

Finally, Sendmail should not need to send mail through an Exchange
server; just send it direct. Incoming mail may be another story!

It has been many years since I've had to configure Sendmail and many
years ago, the vendor of the system I was using provided explicit
directions; where to plug in your hostname, where to plug in your domain
name, etc. As I recall there were maybe five lines in sendmail.conf
that needed editing. The other 10,000 lines are about sending mail
using weird transports and weirder address formats.

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