Sendmail takes ages to start at bootup

[John Summerfield]

Bob Kinney wrote:
> --- John Summerfield <debian at herakles.homelinux.org> wrote:
> 
>> Bob Kinney wrote:
>>> --- John Summerfield <debian at herakles.homelinux.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Simon Slater wrote:
>>>>> 	Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> 		Just a question to satisfy my curiosity.  When booting sendmail takes
>>>>> a very long time to start.  This happens in FC6 but even longer in F7 on
>>>>> a new laptop.  I'm watching it now and its been 7 minutes so far.  Done!
>>>>> Sendmail finished in 9 minutes and now sm-client ... is ... finished
>>>>> in ... 4 minutes.  The rest boots quite quickly, less than 2 minutes for
>>>>> everything else.  All mail is done through another box.  This is not a
>>>>> problem, allows plenty of time to make some tea and get a slice of cake.
>>>>>
>>>> If you ever get tired of the opportunity to have morning tea and a 
>>>> natter while the computer gets started, you might get around to checking 
>>>> that networking is starting properly, you have fully functioning DNS or 
>>>>   an alternative.
>>>>
>>>> -- 
>>>>
>>>> Cheers
>>>> John
>>> I have had that problem, too.  It seems that sendmail requires a complete
>>> hostname (with a domain) and sort of sits on its hands for a long time
>>> before timing out and continuing.
>>>
>>> So in my case, I named the computer "name.localdomain", and updated the
>> entry
>>> in /etc/hosts for my machine to 
>>> 127.0.0.1   name.localdomain name localhost.localdomain localhost
>>> where the last 3 items are aliases and thus will work for probably any
>>> program's needs.
>> except sending mail to other (especially remote) that expect the sender 
>> to comply with appropriate RFCs. If, on connecting to your sendmail 
>> using telnet, it announces itself as "localhost" then it's broken.
>>
>>
>>
>> -- 
>>
>> Cheers
>> John
>>
> 
> 
> [bob at otis ~]$ telnet localhost 25
> Trying 127.0.0.1...
> Connected to localhost.
> Escape character is '^]'.
> 220 otis.localdomain ESMTP Sendmail 8.14.1/8.14.1; Sun, 16 Dec 2007 17:51:51
> -0600
> HELO
> 501 5.0.0 HELO requires domain address
> 
> The point is understood if you are running a public mail service, but I
> don't think mine's "broken."

In the context of interacting with public mail services, it is indeed 
broken, because it does not identify itself properly, and therefore 
cannot send email to servers that insist on RFC compliance.



-- 

Cheers
John

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