Starting Sendmail

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1

I know this must be a simple question, but haveing installed webmin, virtualmin etc, I am unable to start sendmail. It says that sendmail is installed and configured, but I do not appear to be able to start it. I know there is a button to start this. I have tried that and it refers to /etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail start which I have found on the net and placed in the right place. Still it will not start.

Does anyone have a clue as to what I am doing wrong.

Could this also be why I am unable to log on via pop/smtp to send/collect emails.

Thanks in advance.

2

Hey Ian,

There’s quite a few things that can be wrong here…but you’re not giving us a lot of information to go on. Like what OS you’re running, how you installed Sendmail, errors you’re seeing, etc.

But two things jump out that can be clarified right away:

First up, copying a random initscript onto your system is almost guaranteed not to work. initscripts are very specific to the installation of the server in question–even minor differences in install locations can cause the initscript to simply fail to do anything. On most systems, an appropriate initscript is installed alongside sendmail from the same package (RPM, deb, whatever), and the fact that you don’t have one makes me think you either don’t have sendmail installed at all or don’t have it installed correctly (possibly a broken install from source tarball rather than from OS vendor provided packages).

Next up, we should clarify what sendmail does…this line from your post indicates a misunderstanding:

Could this also be why I am unable to log on via pop/smtp to send/collect emails.

POP3 is not the same as SMTP, and the two are not interchangeable. One of them, POP3, is a mail retrieval protocol, used by email clients to fetch email from the server. The other, SMTP, is an outgoing mail transfer protocol, used by mail servers and clients to send mail to a mail server on an as-available basis. The fact that you cannot login via POP3 is wholly orthogonal to the fact that Sendmail isn’t working. POP3 service is provided by a POP3 server, like Dovecot or Courier. Logging in to send mail via SMTP is usually a bit tricky, and requires some additional configuration–it almost certainly isn’t going to “just work” even after you get sendmail started. So, to answer this question: No and no. Starting sendmail by itself is not going to allow you to retrieve mail via POP3, or accept mail from clients that login with SMTP authentication.

Now, beyond these bits, I’m not really sure where to start troubleshooting your problems…We’ve gotta have a lot more information to go on than what you’ve provided. Come back with more information, and we can be more helpful.

3

Apologies for the confusing post. I must of had a brain storm when I posted that.

I now grasp the concept of sendmail and pop/imap.

I am running apache 2 on Fedora Core 5

Can I assume that sendmail is running, as all inbound emails are correctly collected and sorted to the relevant users mail folder.

I have gone through Webmin and installed the Dovecot module. The problem that I now have is that I am unable to find the Dovecot server PID file and also the dovecot config file. Do I have to make these myself or do I have to run something on the server to do this.

I had no problem installing the virtualmin.wbm file. This has worked a treat, but when I tried the same with Dovecot, the file locations did not match the default location on the module configuration file.

Have restarted the server, to no effect.

Please advise as to what I might be doing wrong or at least point me in the right direction.

Thanks in advance for any replies to this small problem.

4

Change the server info from the last post. Seems my system is reporting Fedora Core 2 on Red Hat linux 11

Hope this extra bit of info helps.

5

Hey Ian,

I am running apache 2 on Fedora Core 5

Apache version is irrelevant to email issues.

Can I assume that sendmail is running, as all inbound emails are correctly collected and sorted to the relevant users mail folder.

You can assume some MTA is running. It doesn’t have to be sendmail (though it probably is, since that’s the default MTA for Fedora systems).

I have gone through Webmin and installed the Dovecot module. The problem that I now have is that I am unable to find the Dovecot server PID file and also the dovecot config file. Do I have to make these myself or do I have to run something on the server to do this.

If you had to install the dovecot Webmin module separately, you’re Webmin version needs to be upgraded. The Dovecot module has been included in Webmin for several revisions.

I have gone through Webmin and installed the Dovecot module. The problem that I now have is that I am unable to find the Dovecot server PID file and also the dovecot config file. Do I have to make these myself or do I have to run something on the server to do this.

I had no problem installing the virtualmin.wbm file. This has worked a treat, but when I tried the same with Dovecot, the file locations did not match the default location on the module configuration file.

Are you sure you have Dovecot installed? The Dovecot Webmin module is not Dovecot, it is merely a configuration tool for Dovecot (same with nearly all modules of Webmin).

If you installed Dovecot using the OS standard RPM package, then the standard locations should be correct. But, if you’re running a really old Webmin, and/or one that is confused about your OS version (which your next post seems to indicate might be the case), then it might have incorrect information.

Have restarted the server, to no effect.

Try just restarting the relevant service. Not much to be gained by restarting the whole system, if you haven’t actually changed any of the bootup services using chkconfig (or the Webmin Bootup and Shutdown module). To see if dovecot is running:

service dovecot status

Will tell you if it is running (same with sendmail, if you replace “dovecot” with “sendmail”). Similarly, the following will start a service that isn’t running:

service dovecot start

And this will cause it to be started on subsequent reboots:

chkconfig --level 345 dovecot on

You can find where all of the packaged files from dovecot are located using the following command:

rpm -ql dovecot

(Assuming you installed dovecot from an RPM provided by your OS. If you installed from source tarball, I strongly suggest you rethink that decision.)

6

Sorry for the delay in replying.

I would like to say a[b>BIG</b> thanks to Joe for solving the issue for me. In the end it was a simple case of me not realising that Dovecot was not installed.

Having installed the binary, everything went along smoothly.

<b>Again my sincere thanks for all the help.</b>

I have overcome some smaller probs myself, so I will keep checking back on these forums, in case I can help someone else out.