I am trying to set up sendmail 8.11.0 (don't ask me why - I just want to). I have it installed, I have the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf setup via the generic-linux.mc file.

I am trying to start sendmail in this way :  "/usr/sbin/sendmail -bd -q30m"  No problem it starts.  I can send mail from the local to computer to any other machine on the net.  However, when I send mail to my machine from elsewhere, or when I send local mail on my machine - it never arrives.  I look at the queue (sendmail -bp) and it shows two entries in the queue.  I have tried to force queue processing (sendmail -v -q) and I am getting the following errors:

[root at cascade cf]# sendmail -v -q

Running /var/spool/mqueue/e7O0bRn27703 (sequence 1 of 2)
<root at cascade.veldy.net>... Connecting to local...
<root at cascade.veldy.net>... Operating system error

Running /var/spool/mqueue/e7NKQf427623 (sequence 2 of 2)
<veldy at cascade.veldy.net>... Connecting to local...
<veldy at cascade.veldy.net>... Operating system error


Currently, it is running under the root user (right now it is a test box and behind a firewall).  I believe all permissions are correct.

Incidentally, I followed all the instructions in the README and INSTALL files throughout the distributions (yuck!) to set up sendmail from source.  I originally got the following error when starting sendmail:

/etc/mail/sendmail.cf: line 63: fileclass: cannot open '/etc/mail/local-host-names': No such file or directory

I created a file called /etc/mail/local-host-names with the following:

cascade.veldy.net
localhost

I tried many combinations of this to no effect.  

I have the latest bind installed on this machine also, but it is not running.  I am using DNS services on another host.

Any help getting through this would be greatly appreciated.

Tom Veldhouse
veldy at veldy.net

P.S.  I have appropriated "The Bat Book", but it has been of no help solving this problem.  I am quite sendmail green - I historically use Postfix.