OMNINOGGIN

Previously, I mentioned that I was not able to successfully send emails via sendmail. This functionality is quite useful because WordPress, among other things, uses sendmail to send emails to you when someone leaves a comment on your post. So it turns out that because most public mail servers (i.e. gmail, hotmail, etc) do not trust my “omninoggin.com” mail server domain, all messages I sent were refused. After hours of research, I found out that I can route my mail traffic through my internet service provider’s mail proxy (SBC Yahoo!) to get this to work.

I started by following the Open Addict tutorial section “Configuring Mail Services”. After the step “Edit the [hostname].mc file, add these lines, I put mine above DAEMON_OPTIONS,” I stopped following the tutorial and did the following:

1. Add these lines into my [hostname].mc file (above DAEMON_OPTIONS). Also note that “smtp.sbc.mail.yahoo4.akadns.net” is SBC Yahoo’s mail proxy server.

   define(`confAUTH_OPTIONS', `A')dnl
   define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS', `PLAIN LOGIN')dnl
   TRUST_AUTH_MECH(`PLAIN LOGIN')dnl
   FEATURE(`authinfo',`hash /etc/mail/authinfo')dnl
   define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp.sbc.mail.yahoo4.akadns.net')dnl

2. Create the file /etc/mail/authinfo and put the following into it (all in one line) and save (also make sure you replace <your-username> and <your-password> with your real username and password):

   AuthInfo:smtp.sbc.mail.yahoo4.akadns.net
   "U:<your-username>@sbcglobal.net"
   "I:<your-username>@sbcglobal.net"
   "R:sbcglobal.net" "P:<your-password>" "M:PLAIN"

3. Run the following command:

   makemap hash /etc/mail/authinfo < /etc/mail/authinfo

4. Set sendmail to start (and listen) at boot, so add this to /etc/rc.conf:

   sendmail_enable="YES"

5. Create the file /etc/mail/local-host-names and insert your domain name(s) to accept mail for. Then, finish the sendmail re-build.

   touch /etc/mail/local-host-names
   make all install restart

6. Send a test email to yourself

   sendmail -f "webmaster@your-domain.com" -F "webmaster"

   From: Webmaster <webmaster@your-domain.com>
   To: your.other@email.com
   Subject: Hello World!
   Hello World!
   .

This should work but in case it doesn’t, there is some good troubleshooting information on DSL Reports. It took me 5 hours to figure this out so good luck!