Testing the sendmail.cf file

To put sendmail into `test' mode, you invoke it with the -bt flag. The default configuration file is the sendmail.cf file that is installed on the system. You can test an alternate file by using the -Cfilename option.

In the following examples, we test vstout.cf, the configuration file generated from the vstout.m4 file shown in figure-.

The following tests ensure that sendmail is able to deliver all mail to users on your system. In all cases the result of the test should be the same and point to the local system name with the LOCAL mailer.

First test how a mail to a local user would be delivered.

The output shows how sendmail processes the address internally. It is handed to various rule-sets which analyze it, invoke other rule-sets in turn, and break it up into its components.

In our example, we passed the address me to rule-sets 3 and 0 (this is the meaning of the 3,0 entered before the address). The last line shows the parsed address as returned by rules-et 0, containing the mailer the message would be delivered by, and the host and user name given to the mailer.

Next, test mail to a user on your system with UUCP syntax.

Next, test mail addressed to a user on your system with Internet syntax to your fully qualified hostname.

You should repeat the above two tests with each of the names you specified in the PSEUDONYMS and DEFAULT_NAME parameters in your sendmail.m4 file.

Lastly, test that you can mail to your relay host.