Description of Problem:

Sendmail does not appear to use the system resolver libraries, and the 
way that sendmail does name resolution on its own has issues with the 
way that we change resolv.conf files.

It appears that when sendmail first starts, that it opens the /etc/resolv.conf
file and retains a reference to this file by inode. If the /etc/resolv.conf
file is moved to /etc/resolv.conf.bak and a new /etc/resolv.conf file is 
generated, sendmail will still reference the file that is now known as 
/etc/resolv.conf.bak

This presents problems with our network initscripts that can be configured
to specify a set of new name servers.

This problem is painfully apparent if you happen to being up a cipe interface
that specifies internal name servers in the context of a vpn that uses
rfc1918 addresses to resolve the rfc1918 addresses.

Immagine trying to use fetchmail on a laptop in this situation.

This problem first surfaced with the release of Red Hat Linux 7.0, is
present in 7.1 as well as the current beta.

Please fix sendmail.