[lug] Newbie having problem with sendmail

[Wayde Allen]

On Thu, 10 Feb 2000, Rob wrote:

> I'm trying to set up a gateway machine based on RedHat 6.1 (server 
> installation).  I've been having problems with resolving names 
> external to my small home network.  So last night I had intended to 
> log on and use nslookup to try and troubleshoot the problem.  
> Anyway that will have to wait since my machine does not even boot, 
> it stops while attempting to start sendmail after entering run level 3.  I 
> can boot at run level 1.  Your suggestions for troubleshooting this 
> problem would be greatly appreciated.

I think you got some good comments about this part already.

> As an aside, should I use smail instead of sendmail?  I've read its 
> easier to configure and sendmail seems to come up often in 
> descriptions of computer security problems.

I do think that smail is generally easier to configure than sendmail, but
it is also less flexible.  That can be a problem, and although I've run
both smail and sendmail I've usually ended up switching back to sendmail. 
You should also consider that sendmail is the older of these programs, and
is almost certainly the most common mail transport agent.  Sendmail has
had its share of security problems, but part of this may simply be due to
its ubiquitous nature.  If security and speed are of prime concern to you
I'd suggest that you check out qmail <http://www.qmail.org/>. 

- Wayde
  (wallen at boulder.nist.gov)