I can't send out emails,
need to look into the logs,
but where is the log?
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5Care to let us know what OS you're using? As others have noted below, on most systems it's /var/log/maillog. On Solaris it's /var/adm/maillog. On Debian/Ubuntu it's /var/log/mail.log (note the dot). – Gerald Combs Aug 27 '09 at 16:40
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3tail -f /var/log/maillog – Thomas Denton Aug 28 '09 at 14:50
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3+1 for the wonderful haiku – armadadrive Apr 11 '20 at 18:49
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1@armadadrive just need to remove the "I" in the first line. But yes, great haiku :-D – osullic May 02 '20 at 23:16
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1Note: If none of these paths work, or if you're using cPanel, you might be using Exim (a drop-in replacement for Sendmail). If so, your log may be at `/var/log/exim/main.log`. – rinogo Jun 12 '20 at 22:51
7 Answers
99
Where are the logs?
The default location depends on your linux/unix system, but the most common places are
- /var/log/maillog
- /var/log/mail.log
- /var/adm/maillog
- /var/adm/syslog/mail.log
If it's not there, look up /etc/syslog.conf. You should see something like this
mail.* -/var/log/maillog
sendmail writes logs to the mail facility of syslog. Therefore, which file it gets written to depends on how syslog was configured.
If you system uses syslog-ng (instead of the more "traditional" syslog), then you'll have to look up your syslog-ng.conf file. You'll should something like this:
# This files are the log come from the mail subsystem.
#
destination mail { file("/var/log/mail.log"); };
destination maillog { file("/var/log/maillog"); };
destination mailinfo { file("/var/log/mail.info"); };
destination mailwarn { file("/var/log/mail.warn"); };
destination mailerr { file("/var/log/mail.err"); };
Unable to send out emails?
One of the most common reason I've seen for a freshly installed sendmail not being able to send out emails is the DAEMON_OPTIONS being set to listen only on 127.0.0.1
See /etc/mail/sendmail.mc
dnl #
dnl # The following causes sendmail to only listen on the IPv4 loopback address
dnl # 127.0.0.1 and not on any other network devices. Remove the loopback
dnl # address restriction to accept email from the internet or intranet.
dnl #
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl
If that's your case, remove the "Addr=127.0.0.1" part, rebuild your conf file and you're good to go!
DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp, Name=MTA')dnl
[root@server]$ m4 sendmail.mc > /etc/sendmail.cf
[root@server]$/etc/init.d/sendmail restart
If you've been making changes to /etc/sendmail.cf manually thus far (instead of the *.m4 file) you can make similar changes in /etc/sendmail.cf. The offending line will look like this:
O DaemonPortOptions=Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA
Change it to:
O DaemonPortOptions=Port=smtp, Name=MTA
Shawn Chin
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1I think, the key here is: "DaemonPortOptions=Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA" in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc Very good tip. Saved my day, thanks – serfer2 Jun 30 '17 at 07:17
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1But why remove 127.0.0.1? Having daemon to listen on public interface does not seem as most secure way to do. (I'd suggest to remove the whole "Unable to send out emails" part as it's not relevant to OP.) – Alois Mahdal Aug 24 '17 at 16:23
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1Being unable to send out emails seems relevant, as it's basically the topic behind the topic of the OP. At any rate, that info helped me get sendmail sending. In the process, I found that changing Addr to my machine's `192.168.x.x` IP, so sendmail only listens on my IP, is sufficient to enable sending without enabling receipt from the world. – David Yockey May 07 '21 at 17:16
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check /var/log/maillog or /var/log/messages if you're on *nix
Also, if nothing is going out you may want to check your firewall as follows (be sure to do this as root):
[root@web01 ~]# iptables -L
Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:ms-v-worlds
ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:imaps
ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:imap
ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:pop3
ACCEPT tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:smtp
tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:ssh state NEW recent: SET name: SSH side: source
DROP tcp -- anywhere anywhere tcp dpt:ssh state NEW recent: UPDATE seconds: 60 hit_count: 8 TTL-Match name: SSH side: source
Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target prot opt source destination
Chain RH-Firewall-1-INPUT (0 references)
target prot opt source destination
[root@xxxx ~]#
bsisco
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1Or, on *nix, look in /etc/syslog.conf to see where else those log messages might be getting sent to. – Liudvikas Bukys Aug 27 '09 at 16:34
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3
For fedora et al. journalctl _COMM=sendmail will show messages from sendmail.
I was directed to this answer via a search. /var/log/mail only contains a 'statistics' file on Fedora. And all other mentioned directories are non-existent.
journalctl is not intuitive enough if you don't know what parameter to use, ymmv. so I've posted this solution.
comfytoday
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You can create your own log file
[admin@local ~]# killall sendmail
[admin@local ~]# touch /var/log/sendmail.log
[admin@local ~]# sendmail -bd -q15m >> /var/log/sendmail.log
and then
[admin@local ~]# tail -f /var/log/sendmail.log
451 4.0.0 /fake/path/sendmail.cf: line 0: cannot open: No such file or directory
Jonny
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