How do I get sendmail to work reliably on a Mac OS 10.5?

Question

I need to use sendmail from Macs in an office. At the moment, I can get it to work on the two development Macs (which I think is due to MAMP being installed and working), but getting it to go on the others seems to be a problem...

I assume it's down to some config issue, and hope there's someway to fix it (without resorting to installing MAMP on each machine !).

I think it may be down to the 'local' nature of the from, but not sure. Here's a dump of /var/log/mail.log if that's any help:

Nov 14 14:37:06 claire-g5 postfix/master[5339]: daemon started -- version 2.4.3, configuration /etc/postfix
Nov 14 14:37:06 claire-g5 postfix/qmgr[5341]: 2B625250BDB: from=<[email protected]>, size=1131, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Nov 14 14:37:06 claire-g5 postfix/qmgr[5341]: D5D19250D5A: from=<[email protected]>, size=1191, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Nov 14 14:37:06 claire-g5 postfix/smtp[5344]: 2B625250BDB: host mx01.xxx.uk[212.x.x.134] said: 451 cannot relay now to <[email protected]>, please try again later (in reply to RCPT TO command)
Nov 14 14:37:06 claire-g5 postfix/smtp[5346]: D5D19250D5A: host mx01.xxx.uk[212.x.x.186] said: 451 cannot relay now to <[email protected]>, please try again later (in reply to RCPT TO command)
Nov 14 14:37:07 claire-g5 postfix/smtp[5346]: D5D19250D5A: to=<[email protected]>, relay=mx01.xxx.uk[212.x.x.134]:25, delay=2350, delays=2349/0.08/0.7/0.12, dsn=4.0.0, status=deferred (host mx01.xxx.uk[212.x.x.134] said: 451 cannot
Nov 14 14:37:07 claire-g5 postfix/pickup[5340]: 1A2EC2511D1: uid=501 from=<claire

Answer 1

Note that it's postfix that you have running on your mac, not sendmail.

The problem is that the machine mx01.xxx.uk[212.x.x.134] is configured to block mail relaying (accepting an email over SMTP and sending it on to the final mail server). The postfix configuration files are normally stored in /etc/postfix so you could start by looking there. In particular, look at the mynetworks setting in main.cf.

Answer 2

Ah ha! Thanks Denis - this looks like the beasty...

### MAMP Postfix Configuration - Start ###

myorigin = xxx.com
myhostname = mailer.$myorigin
smtpd_sender_restrictions = permit_inet_interfaces

# smart host
relayhost = auth.xxx.co.uk
smtp_sasl_auth_enable = yes
smtp_sasl_password_maps = hash:/etc/postfix/sasl_MAMP_passwd
smtp_sasl_security_options = noanonymous


### MAMP Postfix Configuration - End ###
# DONT REMOVE: MAMP PRO main.cf template compatibility version: 1

I'll give it a go, and get back to you.