Re: (hopefully simple) sendmail question

[Stan Reichardt <stan@mail.sluug.org>]

"Brune, Charlie" wrote:
> 
> I'm having problems with sendmail.
> 
> I loaded RH Linux 6.2 to one of my machines.  Then I added a user called
> "Charlie" to the system.
> 
> I decided to try the "mail" command.  For some reason, I am unable to "mail
> Charlie".  The mail command tells me:
>         Charlie... User unknown
>         /root/dead.letter... Saved message in /root/dead.letter
> 
> It's the same for any other user I add to the system.
> 
> The user Charlie can send mail to root.  But, if root tries to reply to it (via
> the "r" command), I get the same "user unknown" message as above.
> 
> I tried "sendmail -bv Charlie" and it indicated that Charlie is an invalid user.
> Hey, I can take a hint!  8-)
> 
> Do I need to put "Charlie" in a file to tell sendmail that he is a valid user?
> 

It's been quite a while since I read the O'Reilly book on sendmail, but I seem
to recall that there is a setting in the config file that has something to do
with case sensitivity of names.  The usual set up could be converting "Charlie"
to "charlie",  so if your /etc/password name is Charlie instead of "charlie"
that possibly might be the problem.  Just a first guess.

You might try sending mail to "charlie" to see if it gets thru.  Then you
might create a user named "charlie" to see if that name gets mail or not.

As a side note, I've ALWAYS avoided creating user names that start with a
capital letter.  Older flavors of Unix would cause the terminal to display
only capital letters if you started out typing stuff with the CAPS LOCK key
engaged.  There was a good reason for it, something about supporting legacy
terminals.  Was always a PITA, don't know how Linux handles it.

stan
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