In short, the concensus seems to be that my system(s) have
sendmail configured correctly.
"sendmail -v -bv" verifies the address in two ways:
1. If it's a local address, it checks for the existance of that
user, and hence a full delivery of email.
2. If it's a remote address, it only parses the email address,
and doesn't bother to check and see if that system/domain, and user
exist.
If you want to see if a remote email address is deliverable,
you need to:
1. Ping, nslookup, etc. the system/domain to be
sure it exists.
2. Telnet or mconnect to the mail port, and use the
vrfy command to check if the user exists.
Several people noted that nobody@nobody.com is
in fact a real e-mail address (guess I should have
verified this address first). Still, my systems report
deliverable mail for email address that DEFINITELY
do not exist (e.g. joe@joe.com, hi@fake.com).
Thanks to all that contributed.
----------
From: Dave Cain[SMTP:cain@athena.syrres.com]
Sent: Friday, May 03, 1996 4:24 PM
To: 'sun-managers@ra.mcs.anl.gov'
Subject: sendmail problem?
You'll have to forgive my ignorance of sendmail, but one
of the Sun manuals says you can test whether mail can
be delivered to a recipient by:
sendmail -v -bv recipient
and if you get a "...deliveable message" it can.
So tell me if I'm using I am using sendmail wrong or if
I have a problem with my sendmail configuration:
When I say:
sendmail -v -bv nobody@nobody.com
(obviously a ficticious (sp?) email address), I get:
nobody@nobody.com... deliverable
I get the same response on several SunOS 4.1.X,
Solaris 2.x, and a UnixWare boxes. Is this right, or do I have a
problem with my e-mail.
- Dave
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : Fri Sep 28 2001 - 23:10:59 CDT