Comments below, interspersed.

At 02:43 PM 12/10/02 -0500, Haines Brown wrote:
Here are some preliminary results on fetchmail.

------------------
When I originally ran netsat -l, I got:

  Active Internet connections (only servers)

    Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address   Foreign Address   State
    tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:smtp      *:*           LISTEN

But now for some reason it has changed to:
    tcp        0      0 hartford-hwp.com:smtp *:*         LISTEN
This is *probably* a side effect of changing the entry in /etc/hosts . If you want to see it the old way, the command is probably "netstat -ln".

Whatever the reason for the change, I gather this means something is
listing on the smtp port (25).
Right. But we already knew that from before.

--------------------

Setting up /etc/mail/access. I have:

        localhost.localdomain           RELAY
        localhost                       RELAY
        127.0.0.1                       RELAY You suggest inserting
--------------------

I also checked /etc/mail/local-host-names. It is empty by default.
You suggest entering "mailserver.mydomain.com", but since my machine
has neither a static IP address nor hame, I was not sure what to do. I
instead just put in my hostname (hartford-hwp.com), figuring it would
do no harm.

        # local-host-names - include all aliases for your machine here.
        localhost
        localhost.localdomain
        hartford-hwp.com

--------------------

Next, I ran netstat -lp

      # netstat -lp
        tcp     0    0 *:smtp  *:*    LISTEN      856/sendmail: accep

Port 25 accepts messages from sendmail?
No. sendmail is the name of the program that is LISTENing on port 25. That part is good. And now it is listening on all IP addresses, not just localhost (that's why you have *:smtp instead of 127.0.0.1:smtp, as you did earlier).

--------------------

I started a telnet session, but didn't log in. Will do that, too, if
useful.
When you telnet to a port other than the telnetd port, the concept of "logging in" does not carry over. See below for more.

  # telnet localhost 25
  Trying 127.0.0.1...
  Connected to hartford-hwp.com (127.0.0.1).
  Escape character is '^]'.
  220 hartford-hwp.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.5/8.12.5; Tue, 10 Dec 2002
        13:12:00 -0500
This is good; sendmail does respond on this address/port. You might see if it also responds to an attempt to deliver a message. Try entering this sequence of commands (until you get an error response; then tell us what it is):

HELO localhost
MAIL from: haines@localhost
RCPT to: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
DATA
(any text, follow the instructions for ending)
QUIT

If all of this works (assuming [EMAIL PROTECTED] is a vaild e-mail address for this machine; if not, pick one that is), then the smtp side of things is working and you need to concentrate on your fetchmail settings.

-------------------
I didn't know what might be useful from /etc/mail/sendmail.cf, but as
I waited thinking about that, I saw that my fetchmail -k command
actually carried through. It took about 20 seconds to start the first
download. The next few messages took about 10 seconds each. Then a
batch of about 8 downloaded normally (2-3 seconds for the batch), then
slow again. Then fast again. The pattern was consistent for additional
tries.

The first messages was an undeliverable notive from when I tried to
send myself a test message almost a week ago:

[EMAIL PROTECTED] Deferred: hartford-hwp.com.: Network is unreachable
This is not enough information to interpret. Who (what host) generated the "Network is unreachable" message? Your Linux box or the ISP's mail server? I'm guessing the second, and to interpret that, I need to know what else it said (since from here hartford-hwp.com is perfectly reachable).

After five days, it was deleted from queue. The batch of test messages
I sent myself (also 127.0.0.1, also localhost.localdomain) fell into a
black hole.

I don't know where to look for a fechmail log, but I ran fetchmail -v
-v > /opt/tmp/-fetchmail.log. Because it was just one new message that
(successfully) downloaded, I'll here venture to paste the entire log:
Now I'm confused again. Above, you talked about fetchmail downloading a dozen or so messages, but here you say "it was just one new message". Please be more clear.

Oops. Left it on the wrong HD. Will have to retrieve it next time I
boot the disk. But the message did not wave any red flags (but I may
well not recognize one even if I saw it).



--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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