[Grml] Re: Sendmail hostname error

[Paul Johnson]

][ wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> I wasn't able to use sendmail recently. I've now track it down that the
> hostname that my Sendmail uses is wrong. How can I fix it?
> 
>   % /usr/sbin/sendmail -bi
>   WARNING: local host name (;; connection timed out; no servers could be
>   reached) is not qualified; see cf/README: WHO AM I? /etc/mail/aliases:
>   24 aliases, longest 10 bytes, 233 bytes total
> 
>   % grep 'WHO AM I' -r /etc/mail/* || echo no found
>   no found
> 
> Please help.
> 
> 
> FYI, this is the respond that I got explaining why it is happening.
> 
> _________________________________________________________________
> You seem to be a victim of the same broken "helpfulness" as described in
> the (apparently misthreaded by google) thread at
> 
>
http://groups.google.com/group/comp.mail.sendmail/browse_frm/thread/7095fe4c3569eed1
> 
> - i.e. some install script or whatever has "configured" your sendmail
> with a *host name* of literally ";; connection timed out; no servers
> could be reached"! This is actually an error message from the 'dig'
> command - i.e. the script probably tries to use 'dig' to get the
> fully-qualified host name, and blindly accepts any output from 'dig'.
> The slightly different greeting comes from the fact that sendmail
> inserts the "ESMTP" there as the second word, under the reasonable
> assumption that the host name is a single word...
> _________________________________________________________________

This might seem obvious, but did you make sure your mail server has a PTR
record for it's IP?  If not, make sure your mail server has a PTR record in
DNS and do a dpkg-reconfigure -plow sendmail.