[lug] sendmail won't send mail

[Cory Dekker]

> Unable to lock mailbox: Permission denied
>
This pretty much indicates that you have a permissions problem, probably
related to either "/var/spool/mail", or "/var/spool/mail/friejas"
Make sure "mail" is root/mail/770, and "friejas" is friejas/mail/660.
Once your sure that /bin/mail is working, try tightening "friejas" to 600.
Some boxes will want "/var/spool/mail" 1777 or 1775, with the sticky
bit set for certain mail programs, and read/search access for other users.
However, if you keep your system tight, you should be able to run 770.
If these doesn't do the job, you may have a bogus lockfile laying around
that has its own permissions problem, and is refusing to be deleted.

As for the sendmail command-line problem, it could be any one of a
number of possibilities.  However, sendmail was never intended to be
used for command-line e-mail generation, even though what you did
SHOULD probably work.  Rather than go through all of the possible
things you should/could check: your sendmail.cf file, your "sendstuff"
content format, and other configuration files, all of which could play
a factor (including aliases, hosts, passwd, and all of the /etc/mail files);
let me just suggest a tool more designed and intended for you use:

$ /bin/mail friejas <sendstuff

It should handle properly pre-formatting the message in a much more
reliable fashion, prior to handing the message off to sendmail.

BTW, if you are really headstrong about this, use the sendmail -v idea,
and maybe -d9, -U, -o DeliveryMode=i, and perhaps even some of the
other -o options ... per the Sendmail Installation and Operations Guide.

                                                -Cory


____________________________________________________
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jason at matchingmoms.com wrote:

> I'll try fiddling with the permissions.More concerning to me, however, is the
> fact that sendmail did not send any mail.  I executed/usr/sbin/sendmail
> friejas <sendstuff
> several times, and yet nothing appears in my mailbox.  Any thoughts on that? I
> appreciate your time on this,Jason
>
>      ----- Original Message -----
>      From:Harris, James
>      To: 'lug at lug.boulder.co.us'
>      Sent: Tuesday, March 27, 2001 9:46 AM
>      Subject: RE: [lug] sendmail won't send mail
>      This may be terribly roundabout, but I know that I've seen something
>      like this on Slackware.  Try running pine and see if it reports a
>      permissions message in the bottom of the screen when it's running.
>      I had to set my /var/spool/mail dir to 1777 (this box is just a
>      private box so I'm not concerned too badly with security, but you
>      may want to do some investigation/serious consideration of
>      permissions before setting this.  If security isn't a bit issue,
>      however, give it a try and see if it helps.)
>
>           -----Original Message-----
>           From: jason at matchingmoms.com
>           [mailto:jason at matchingmoms.com]
>           Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 21:24
>           To: lug at lug.boulder.co.us
>           Subject: [lug] sendmail won't send mail
>           I would expect the following command to have mailed the
>           contents of the 'sendstuff' file to myself, but it did
>           not: friejas ~/debian/sendmail$ /usr/sbin/sendmail friejas
>           <sendstuff
>           friejas ~/debian/sendmail$ mail
>           Mail version 8.1 6/6/93.  Type ? for help.
>           "/var/spool/mail/friejas": 1 message
>           >   1 MAILER-DAEMON at powerp  Thu Mar 22 20:59  13/539
>           "DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA"
>           & q
>           Unable to lock mailbox: Permission denied
>           friejas ~/debian/sendmail$ mailCan anyone help?Thank
>           you,Jason
>
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