Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 19102
remote smtp sends not working
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:59 EDT
I do not run sendmail, instead I use an external smtp server. Prior to upgrading to 7.0, I had successfully configured nmh to use the external server to deliver mail. After upgrading to 7.0 and updating the new /etc/nmh/mts.conf file with the values I used in 6.2, an nmh 'send' operation fails with: post: problem initializing server; [BHST] premature end-of-file on pipe I can successfully send through the external smtp server using other mailer programs.
Ok, I have figured out the problem. nmh was compiled with the --with-mts=sendmail option, which disables smtp support. This is probably related to the spec file ChangeLog entry: * Thu Jun 22 2000 Bill Nottingham <notting@redhat.com> - talk to sendmail, not to a local SMTP server I think this is wrong -- sendmail should have an open smtp port so using smtp does not prevent using the local sendmail process if there is one. But using sendmail exclusively prevents the use of external stmp servers.
There is a move towards 7.x releases having sendmail configured by default to have no listening ports open on the desktop (for obvious reasons). This is an unexpected and undesirable side effect that needs looking into.
Would it be possible to configure sendmail to only open the loopback smtp port, rather than the smtp ports on all interfaces?
sendmail per default now only listens on the loopback device, but most other apps also reply on /usr/sbin/sendmail. I think it makes sense to also require that for nmh, so I leave it like it is now. Best solution would be to have this as a runtie option to either use smtp or a local app. (Haven't looked too closely at nmh.)
I got the same error when using nmh on RedHat 7.1 together with postfix. The problem with postfix/nmh is, that nmh does not find the sendmail binary. Nmh is looking for /usr/lib/sendmail but if you use postfix, then it will be in /usr/sbin/sendmail. Two solutions: (a) make a link from /usr/lib/sendmail to /usr/sbin/sendmail (b) set "sendmail: /usr/sbin/sendmail" in /etc/nmh/mts.conf telling nmh where to find the binary Solution (a) was taken by RedHat building the sendmail RPM. It contains the link of (a). But the postfix RPM does not contain this link, so it does not work with nmh. Florian/RedHat: Could you please add the link /usr/lib/sendmail -> /usr/sbin/sendmail to the postfix package? It would increase compatibility to nmh and many other programs expecting sendmail in /usr/lib/sendmail?