Sendmail not listening on any ports on Fedora Core 7

[SorC]

Hi,

First off this is a repost of a post I made on LinuxQuestions.org.

I have a fresh build of the latest sendmail release on a Fedora Core 7 box.

I have had no problems, compiling, installing and putting everything in place. However, after running sendmail I've found that it isn't listening for any incoming smtp connections what so ever. I've kept my sendmail.mc file down to the bare minimum and it follows:

VERSIONID(`$Id: generic-linux.mc,v 8.1 1999/09/24 22:48:05 gshapiro Exp $')dnl
OSTYPE(linux)dnl
DOMAIN(generic)dnl
define(`DATABASE_MAP_TYPE', `hash')dnl
FEATURE(`virtusertable', `hash /etc/mail/virtusertable')dnl
MAILER(local)dnl
MAILER(smtp)dnl

The above worked to generate a cf file that got sendmail working perfectly on my previous RedHat 9 box. I have rebuilt and reinstalled the .cf files at least a dozen times with various minor changes, restarting sendmail every time.

I have tried using various recommendations of the DAEMON_OPTIONS definition none of which have made any difference.

The reason I know sendmail isn't listening is that when I run:

netstat -a | grep LISTEN

I get:

tcp 0 0 *:mysql *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:ftp *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 localhost.localdom:postgres *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:pop3 *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:http *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:telnet *:* LISTEN
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6649 /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6557 /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6264 /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6936 @/var/run/hald/dbus-fi0qSqDJgZ
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6939 @/var/run/hald/dbus-Q4EGBjjoWD

The sendmail processes running when I restart sendmail are:

3510 ? Ss 0:00 sendmail: Queue runner@01:00:00 for /var/spool/mqueue
3517 ? Ss 0:00 sendmail: Queue runner@01:00:00 for /var/spool/clientmqueue

I have also done the following:

Telneting to port 25 from the machine itself gives:

[root@server cf]# telnet server.domain.com 25
Trying [ipaddress]...
telnet: connect to address [ipaddress]: Connection refused

where [ipaddress] is the address of the external ethernet connection (i.e direct connection to the internet).

Running lsof -i :25 yields no result

Inspecting the mail log immediately after starting sendmail gives:

Sep 19 11:05:25 server sendmail[30037]: alias database /etc/mail/aliases rebuilt by simon
Sep 19 11:05:25 server sendmail[30037]: /etc/mail/aliases: 1 aliases, longest 5 bytes, 10 bytes total
Sep 19 11:05:25 obiwan sendmail[30044]: starting daemon (8.14.1): queueing@01:00:00
Sep 19 11:05:25 server sm-msp-queue[30051]: starting daemon (8.14.1): queueing@01:00:00
Sep 19 11:05:25 server sm-msp-queue[30052]: l8I6tQgb026691: to=root, delay=18:09:59, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, pri=211353, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Connection refused by [127.0.0.1]

My latest efforts to solve the problem follow:

First, I tried building an older version of sendmail on my FC7 box. This version of sendmail is one I had successfully compiled and run on a Redhat 9 box. This yielded the same results as above.
Second, I scratch built a second FC7 box with an older machine. With this I kept the absolute most basic generic linux configs that come with the sendmail source. This also yielded the same result as above.
Third, I used the sendmail 8.14.1 source to build sendmail on an FC5 box, both with and without Berkeley db. Both builds worked first time without a problem.


None of the above has brought me any closer to solving my problem, other than to draw the conclusion that there is something to do with Fedora Core 7 that I have missed.

Thankyou for your help in advance.

Cheers,
SorC

[foobar47]

Hi,

What about your firewall ?

[SorC]

Originally Posted by foobar47

Hi,

What about your firewall ?

There are no active firewall rules that I am aware of on the machine at present. When I installed Fedora Core 7 I didn't install any optional packages. Are there any other firewall packages that are installed by default ?

Also note that the telnet attempt in my original post was done from the same machine that is having the issue (i.e no other machines were involved).


Cheers,
SorC

[paddrino]

Iptables perhaps? Try "/etc/init.d/iptables stop". See if that gets you in. If so, you need to modify iptables to allow specific connections. Not having any firewall protection on a public internet interface is not typically a good idea. To start iptables back up "/etc/init.d/iptables start" or just restart the system.

[William Haller]

Try explicitly adding

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp, Name=MTA')dnl

to the configuration file and try again. Any particular reason you're rolling your own instead of using the F7 rpm or did I misunderstand your post? Is the sendmail-cf rpm installed as well?

[reneve59]

I have a similar problem. Yesterday I have upgraded my FC6 box (on wich sendmail was running as mail server for a small network) to FC7, now client PC's can receive mail but can not send mail, but it is possible to send mail directly from the server to any mail address.

The receiving mail problem was solved adding

DAEMON_OPTIONS('Port=smtp,Name=MTA') dnl

to sendmail.mc.


The configuration is the same as it was in FC6 box. Checking the sendmail log, an error message similar to the following is displayed

presario.realdomain.com [192.168.1.111] did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA

Issuing netstat -an | grep :25 | grep tcp command generates

tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN


Any idea?

[William Haller]

Is your sendmail server set up to allow these machines to relay through it to send messages? You need to add lines to the /etc/mail/access file to allow this to happen.
See the sendmail configuration documentation for more information.

[reneve59]

I've solved the problem.

I am using Pegasus mail wiith SSL authentication and it seems to be a incompatibility with OpenSSL installed on FC7 box

I removed SSL auth in Pegasus and it can send mail. Now I have to find out what is happening with SSL.

Thanks for your help.

reneve59

[SorC]

Originally Posted by William Haller

Try explicitly adding

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp, Name=MTA')dnl

to the configuration file and try again. Any particular reason you're rolling your own instead of using the F7 rpm or did I misunderstand your post? Is the sendmail-cf rpm installed as well?

First you did understand my post. I am building sendmail from source. The reason for this is that I like to know what's been done from the outset and not have to install dependencies I don't want/need (e.g procmail). Second adding the above daemon options line to my mc file and rebuilding and installing the cf file has not changed my situation. Sendmail is still not listening.

netstat -a | grep LIST
tcp 0 0 *:mysql *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:ftp *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 localhost.localdom:postgres *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:pop3 *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:http *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:ssh *:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 *:telnet *:* LISTEN
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6649 /tmp/.s.PGSQL.5432
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6557 /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6264 /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6936 @/var/run/hald/dbus-fi0qSqDJgZ
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 6939 @/var/run/hald/dbus-Q4EGBjjoWD

Also I may not have been clear in my above post aside from what I have installed myself fedora is installed with base software only. I went through the customise packages section of the install and deselected everything. I then installed only the rpms I needed to build the packages I want - Berkeley DB, Sendmail, PostgresSQL etc. So there shouldn't be any firewall software installed unless there is some that isn't optional. I've checked for IPtables and it isn't running.

Cheers,
SorC

[William Haller]

If I were troubleshooting it, I would do the following. First, I would install the sendmail and sendmail-cf packages and modify the config as needed for my situation and make sure it worked from the RPMs. Then I would move the /etc/mail directory to /etc/mail-rpm, delete the RPMs and then run the compile from source method. Look for differences between the configuration from the RPM and the configuration from source.