[ILUG] PPP/mail setup

[Kenn Humborg]

> Thanks a lot.
>
> I guess I didn't spend as long reading the docs as I thought I had.
>
> I'm presuming that running sendmail -q from /etc/rc.d/init.d/sendmail will
> send mail automatcally, or do I actually have to log in as root to send
> off my mail when connected? It's not a major hastle, but it's a hastle :)

init.d/sendmail probably runs sendmail like this:

   sendmail -bd -q15m

This means run as a daemon and do a queue run every 15 mins.
If you bring up your PPP connection just after a queue run, then
you'll be waiting a while for the next one.  To get around this
I give sendmail a prod in /etc/ppp/ip-up.local:

sendmail -q &
( sleep 60 ; sendmail -q ) &
( sleep 120 ; sendmail -q ) &

The delayed queue runs are to deal with the case where
a queue run started just before bringing up the link.
Sendmail does DNS lookups that take about 2 mins to
timeout, and a queue run will ignore any messages
already being processed.

In addition, if you're using mutt, you should set the
sendmail_timeout variable to immediately background
sendmail (check /usr/doc/mutt/manual.txt or whatever
for info).  Otherwise you may get annoying delays while
sendmail's initial DNS lookups fail when not online.
(I don't know if this applies when you _don't_ run a
local name server, but you'll need it if you do.)

Later,
Kenn