HP-UX Mailing Services Administrator's Guide (B2355-91064)

Troubleshooting Sendmail
This section describes the following techniques for troubleshooting Sendmail:
• “Keeping the Aliases Database Up to Date” (page 92)
• “Verifying Address Resolution and Aliasing” (page 92)
• “Verifying Message Delivery” (page 93)
• “Contacting the Sendmail Daemon to Verify Connectivity” (page 94)
• “Setting Your Domain Name” (page 95)
• “Attempting to Start Multiple Sendmail Daemons” (page 95)
• “Configuring and Reading the Sendmail Log” (page 95)
• “Printing and Reading the Mail Queue” (page 98)
• “Changes to Sendmail Files and Databases” (page 101)
You must log in as superuser to perform all Sendmail troubleshooting.
Keeping the Aliases Database Up to Date
You must rebuild the aliases database if you have made changes to the aliases text file.
You must restart Sendmail after you change the configuration file or the aliases database.
Issue the following commands, on a standalone system or on the mail server, to rebuild
the aliases database and restart Sendmail:
/sbin/init.d/sendmail stop
/sbin/init.d/sendmail start
Updating your NIS Aliases Database
If you are using NIS to manage your aliases database, see NIS Administrator's Guide, at
the URL http://docs.hp.com/en/netcom.html.
Verifying Address Resolution and Aliasing
In order to deliver a message, Sendmail must first resolve the recipient addresses
appropriately. To determine how Sendmail would route mail to a particular address,
issue the following command:
/usr/sbin/sendmail -bv -v -oL10 address [address...]
The -bv (verify mode) option causes Sendmail to verify addresses without collecting
or sending a message.
The -v (verbose) flag causes Sendmail to report alias expansion and duplicate
suppression.
The -oL10 (log level) option sets the log level to 10. At log level 10 and above,
sendmail -bv reports the mailer and host to which it resolves recipient addresses.
92 Configuring and Administering Sendmail