hi friends, i have a small network with 50 clients having win98, win2000 prof, linux operating systems. all are managing with my linux server. now i wan tto configure my server as sendmail server within lan. im not yet have any idea how to do it.. i read docs but still ididnt get clear idea on the setup.. i have only one system for this.is it enough. what the things i have to do for this. pls give me some suggestions.. thnx in advance regards, kishore

It all depends how you want your network configured but if you are having trouble with the sendmail docs already, it will only get worse! Sendmail is not ideal for novice administrators. You'll most likely only need one MTA and maybe a pop3/imap server and I'd suggest looking at the alternative MTAs such as qmail,exim and postfix. Have a look at some of these: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/HOWTO-INDEX/apps.html#SERVERMAIL

hi friends, tnx for ur reply, can u explain basic steps n which files have to configure to make my linux server to work as a mail server in my lan... pls help me regards, kishore

If you've install the servers; inetd (or xinetd), imap and sendmail, presumably on a machine called something like generic.kishore.com on 192.168.0.1, and perhaps an internet facing interface, you will likely find that no configuration other than creating user accounts is necessary to get things going. IIRC, by default sendmail will be listening on port 25 on all interfaces and will handle mail transfers locally for anybody@kishore.com provided they have a user account, and inetd/xinetd will automatically start up the imap/pop server for any client connecting to port 143/110 who wants to collect his/her mail. You can easily test the setup with a dummy account and it can't hurt to try it out. However, it is a much better idea to read up on the more modern, more secure and more convenient (in the long run) alternatives.

Ooops! I meant anybody@generic.kishore.com - it may attempt to transfer anything coming in for someuser@someothernode.kishore.com which is not a good idea but it won't matter initially, provided your internal clients are set up properly and you can change sendmail's behaviour to stop it from doing that later - it's probably best to run webmin and the sendmail webmin module to configure sendmail properly, I really can't remember what sendmail's default configuration is.

hi freinds, thnk u very much for ur kind replies. im using 2 network cards, one with live n one with local ip. now i changed the option in sendmail.cf daemonportoption=port=smtp addr = 192.168.0.2(my local ip); when i check with the command netstat -nl its lisitening on port 137 ie udp i thnk it should be 25 tcp i gave my domain name in /etc/mail/local-hosts-names again when i start sendmail service its giving msg like arting sendmail: 451 4.0.0 /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 95: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/local-host-names': World writable directory 451 4.0.0 /etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 571: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/trusted-users': World writable directory [FAILED] Starting sm-client: [ OK ] eventhough if i removed domain name in /etc/mail/local-host-names giving the same msg.. so what shuld be wrong with my config pls help me. regards kishore

It can't have been listening on 137. Anyway, the file: /etc/mail/local-host-names should not have needed changing, it should just contain 'localhost' if anything - not 'mail.kishore.com' or whatever you put in it. You should not have edited sendmail.cf by hand - did it not contain a warning? I don't know why you would need to change the DaemonPortOptions line anyway but I doubt you should have done it. The file sendmail.mc is for editing by hand. When you have changed stuff in the directory /etc/mail you have to run 'make' in it. I suggest reversing the changes you've made, running make and trying again. You should not have made any changes to the default installation unless you really needed to AND knew what you were doing. Did you try just running the default sendmail like I suggested?