Dear All, I have Redhat 8.0 and sendmail 8.12.5 installed and configured, I would like to use hosts.allow and deny to restrict the access to that server. This server run as Mail Server only. I did the following: Case 1: hosts.deny ALL:ALL hosts.allow ALL:192.168.32. Everything working perfect for local users for case 1 Case 2: hosts.deny ALL:ALL hosts.allow sendmail:ALL sshd:ALL imaps:ALL pop3s:ALL In case 2, no one can not retrieve their email and got an error message: Your 'Inbox' folder was not polled for its unread count. Your server has unexpectedly terminated the connection. Possible causes for this include server problems, network problems, or a long period of inactivity. Account: 'USER1 IMAP', Server: 'mail.domain.com', Protocol: IMAP, Server Response: '', Port: 993, Secure(SSL): Yes, Error Number: 0x800CCC0F I would like to know, howto restrict the access to this server for local and remote (roaming) users. Please help Many thanks for your reply in advance

An easy answer is to not have valid login accounts for your mail clients. Setting the login shell to '/bin/false' or something similar (system dependent) will allow them to authenticate, send and recieve mail but not login to the mail server.

Many thanks for your reply, your reply let me know my mistake which I should type the daemon not the service name like: hosts.allow sendmail:ALL sshd:ALL imapd:ALL ipop3d:ALL

Sendmail configuration has been changed from redhat 7.2 due to security. I did the following steps for my mail server 1) Edit /etc/hosts.deny ALL except sendmail: ALL 2) Edit /etc/mail/sendmail.mc Comment out Dameon_option (127.0.0.1) (it is towards the end) 3) run the following command m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/sendmail.cf hope this helps