Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Copyright Notice / Redistribution Requirements
  2. Introduction and Miscellaneous
    1. What is this newsgroup?
    2. What is the scope of this FAQ?
    3. Where can I find the latest version of this FAQ?
    4. Where can I send comments, questions, and bug reports?
    5. Where can I ask email-related DNS questions?
    6. How can I subscribe to these?
    7. Which version of sendmail should I run?
    8. What is the latest release of sendmail?
    9. Where can I find it?
    10. What are the differences between Version 9 and other versions?
    11. What's the best platform for running sendmail?
    12. What is BIND and where can I get the latest version?
    13. What is smrsh and where can I get it?
    14. What is smap and where can I get it?
    15. What is TCP-wrappers and where can I get it?
    16. Why won't db 1.85 build on my machine?
    17. What is makemap and where can I get it?
  3. Version 8 Specific Issues
    1. How do I make all my addresses to appear to be from a single host?
    2. How do I rewrite my From: lines to read "First_Last@My.Domain" or "Different_Name@My.Domain"?
    3. But what about fully qualified addresses, such as those from Pine of FEATURE(always_add_domain)?
    4. So what was the user database database featured intended for?
    5. Why the hostility toward using full names for email addresses?
    6. deprecated
    7. How do I manage several (virtual) domains?
    8. There are four UUCP mailers listed in the configuration files. Which one should I use?
    9. depcreated
    10. How do I solve "collect: I/O error on connection" or "reply: read error from host.name" errors?
    11. Why can't my users forward their mail to a program?
    12. Why do connections to the SMTP port take such a long time?
    13. Why do I get "unknown mailer error 5 -- mail: options MUST PRECEDE recipients" errors?
    14. Why does version 8 sendmail panic my SunOS box?
    15. Why does the Unix From line get mysteriously munged when I send to an alias?
    16. Why doesn't MASQUERADE_AS (or the user database) work for envelope addresses as well as header addresses?
    17. How do I run version 8 sendmail and support the MAIL11V3 protocol?
    18. Why do messages disappear from my queue unsent?
    19. When is sendmail going to support RFC 2047 MIME header encoding?
    20. Why can't I get mail to some places, but instead always get the error "reply: read error from name.of.remote.host"?
    21. Why doesn't "FEATURE(xxx)" work?
    22. How do I configure sendmail not to use DNS?
    23. How do I get all my queued mail delivered to my Unix box from my ISP?
    24. Why do I get the error message unable to write /etc/mail/sendmail.pid?
    25. Why can't I compile sendmail with Berkeley DB 2.X?
    26. What operating systems has Berkeley sendmail been ported to?
    27. How do I prevent Relaying Denied errors for my clients?
    28. Why isn't virtual hosting working, even after I added a Kvirtuser to sendmail.cf?
    29. How can I add a header specifying the actual recipient when having multiple users in a virtual domain go to a single mailbox?
    30. What do I do when Build fails because groff was not found?
    31. What does "class hash not available" mean?
    32. How do I configure majordomo with sendmail 8.9 without relaxing the DontBlameSendmail option?
    33. How do I configure my system in general with sendmail 8.9?
    34. What does "foo not available for sendmail programs" mean?
    35. How do I add a footer/signature to all (outgoing) e-email messages?
    36. What does "Cannot open hash database ... Invalid argument" mean?
    37. What does "parse error before `NDBM'" mean?
    38. What does "may be forged" mean?
    39. How do I send using an alternate port?
    40. Why can't I use BerkeleyDB 4.1.x?
    41. How do I use CIDR notation in the access map (or other places)?
    42. Why isn't CIRD notation directly supported by sendmail?
    43. What does "Need to recompile with -DNEWDB for hash support" mean?
    44. I disabled sendmail on some machines which don't receive mail, but since upgrading to 8.12 they can't send mail either; why?
  4. General Sendmail Issues
    1. Should I use a wildcard MX for my domain?
    2. How can I set up an auto-responder?
    3. How can I get sendmail to deliver local mail to $HOME/.mail instead of into /usr/spool/mail (or /usr/mail)?
    4. Why does it deliver the mail interactively when I'm trying to get it to go into queue only mode?
    5. How can I solve "MX list for hostname points back to hostname" and "config error: mail loops back to myself" messages?
    6. Why does my sendmail process sometimes hang when connecting over a SLIP/PPP link?
    7. How can I summarize the statistics generated by sendmail in the syslog?
    8. How can I check my sendmail.cf to ensure that it's re-writing addresses correctly?
    9. What is procmail, and where can I get it?
    10. How can I solve "cannot alias non-local names" errors?
    11. Is sendmail Year-2000 (Y2K) compliant?
    12. How can I batch remote mail to be sent using my ISP while delivering local mail immediately?
    13. What does "unknown mailer error 1" mean?
    14. How do I queue mail for another domain?
    15. How do I create attachments with sendmail?
    16. How do I find sendmail's version number?
    17. How do I handle user names with upper-case characters?
    18. What does "NOQUEUE: Null connection from ..." mean?
    19. How do I configure sendmail for POP/IMAP/...?
    20. How can I automatically copy messages based on sender or recipient addresses?
    21. How can I send mail to all users?
    22. Why can't I receive external mail?
    23. How do I restrict attachments with sendmail?
    24. Can I get sendmail to verify an entire e-mail address instead of just the domain?
  5. Vendor/OS Specific Sendmail Issues
    1. Sun Microsystems SunOS/Solaris 1.x/2.x
      1. How can I solve "line 273: replacement $3 out of bounds" errors?
      2. How can I solve "line 445: bad ruleset 96 (50 max)" errors?
      3. Why does version 8 sendmail (< 8.7.5) sometimes hang under Solaris 2.5?
      4. Why can't I use SunOS/Solaris to get email to certain large sites?
      5. Why do I have trouble compiling on Solaris?
      6. How does 8.X compare to 8.X+Sun?
    2. IBM AIX
      1. The system resource controller always reports sendmail as "inoperative". What's wrong?
      2. Why can't I use AIX to get email to some sites?
      3. Why can't I get sendmail 8.7.1 to use MX records with AIX 3.2.5?
    3. Linux
      1. Red Hat
        1. Why do I have so many sendmail problems configuring sendmail with linuxconf?
        2. I built sendmail.cf from sendmail.mc and it works until the next reboot of the machine. What is going on?
        3. Why can't I receive mail with Red Hat 7.1 and later?
      2. SusE
        1. Where is the sendmail.mc file on SuSE Linux?
  6. Additional Information Sources (RFC 1807 bibliography format)
    1. Reference material devoted exclusively to sendmail
    2. Reference material with chapters or sections on sendmail
    3. Reference material on subjects related to sendmail
    4. World-wide web index pages on sendmail
    5. World-wide web index pages Internet email in general
    6. Online tutorials for sendmail
    7. Online archives of mailing lists and Usenet newsgroups, relating to Internet email
  7. Special Thanks