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Hello,

I am facing a weird issue and i am not sure about why it is happening. I have a RHEL VM and i have installed Sendmail on it. Sendmail configuration is fine and correct. I am trying to send email to localhost only, now the problem is when the network mode is "Bridged" the email is delivered instantly without any delay. However when the network mode is "Internal Network" the email delay of approx 3 minutes occurs. So can anyone let me know why the delay occurs when machine is "Internal network" mode.

Probably a DNS issue, depending on how you setup sendmail if it is looking for a specific "name" even localhost can confuse it *if* DNS is not present or the host file does not have a proper entry. Bridged will as will VBox NAT provide some DNS but Internal does not. You have to provide it.

Perryg wrote:Probably a DNS issue, depending on how you setup sendmail if it is looking for a specific "name" even localhost can confuse it *if* DNS is not present or the host file does not have a proper entry. Bridged will as will VBox NAT provide some DNS but Internal does not. You have to provide it.

There is no DNS setup, i am trying to deliver the email locally and lookup is being done via /etc/hosts file and it is setup correctly. Infact when i hit CTRL+D to send the email using sendmail command it simply hangs and then returns after 3 minutes, same happens when i send email via mutt. I have made no changes in the sendmail.cf/mc file. I am just going with the default settings. I was just doing something and found this issue in "Internal Netwrok mode". I have attached the /etc/hosts file. Can u please take a look,

Thanks,
RB

If you haven't setup sendmail logging then look in the /var/log/syslog to see what it is waiting for.

Question: why are you using the Internal mode? Do you have another guest that you have also set to use Internal? If not then in essence you have no network.

Perryg wrote:If you haven't setup sendmail logging then look in the /var/log/syslog to see what it is waiting for.

Question: why are you using the Internal mode? Do you have another guest that you have also set to use Internal? If not then in essence you have no network.

In logs it does not show much of the information, i have attached the log file, i am sorry for the inconvenienc but the system is not letting me post urls which is just a part of the logs. Please have a look at the logs and let me know if you can figure out the issue. And yes i have another guest in the same network mode, so i do have a internal network. I am actually intending to set up a internal sendmail server and test it.

Log shows you have it set up as a relay server with a 5 minute delay. I would really suggest that you look at the config. Have you been working with sendmail long?
Anyway this is really out of the scope for this forum. Perhaps you should ask sendmail?

Here this should help.
http://www.pettingers.org/code/sendmail-local.html
If that one does not suit you google setup an internal sendmail server

Perryg wrote:Log shows you have it set up as a relay server with a 5 minute delay. I would really suggest that you look at the config. Have you been working with sendmail long?
Anyway this is really out of the scope for this forum. Perhaps you should ask sendmail?

No i am just a beginner of sendmail. But i doubt i have set up sendmail set up as a relay server with a 5 minute delay. because when i switch to bridged mode it works fine without any delay at all. So it is something with the Internal mode in Vbox which i am not sure of.

Thanks for the link, i will take a look at it.

Well you appear to know more about it than I do so I will leave you to your work.

Perryg wrote:Well you appear to know more about it than I do so I will leave you to your work.

Well that was NOT meant in anyway that i know more than you, but i was just curious that why it works without delay when i switch to bridged mode. I am sorry if i sounded rude but i did not mean to be in any way. Please keep helping, i really appreciate you. I was saying that because i have not made any change in the sendmail.mc, i am just working with the default config file.

When in bridged mode the network is complete. Sendmail like all others email programs depend on DNS and the delay you are seeing is normal if the server has trouble finding anything. It checks one source, then goes to another and finally relies on the host file. Internal, well that makes it a direct internal server and you need to configure accordingly. I see you have defined a fake domain and this would also need to be addressed. If sendmail is set to check for valid domain names then that would take time.

The final reason for this being a configuration issue lies in the fact that you set this up in bridged mode and the default configuration file would have been built around that. So try the link I sent and then we can talk more after you work through that. But since this is not a VBox issue we may need to take this private.

Thanks PerryG, thanks a lot. I will surely do what you just said and would get back to you !!