Hi there, I've been trying to configure sendmail on my office box. (version 8.12 on Debian 3.0 Woody) I would be using the office smtp router as the smarthost. I need to configure my daemon to authenticate (AUTH = LOGIN) to this smarthost before trying to send mail. I have checked out the procedure using the telnet to port 25. It sure works.

Now to configure sendmail for this we have two options:

DefaultAuthInfo ( and provide the mapping in the file thats the argument of DefaultAuthInfo)

or

The 'authinfo' ruleset : This can be done by using FEATURE('authinfo') and providing the mapping.

The problem: 1.> I could not find the exact syntax for mapping the auth using DefaultAuthInfo. Yes, I have checked the documentation. It seems that this option is deprecated and would not be supported in the future versions. 2.> So I went on and used FEATURE('authinfo') and provided the mapping in the appropriate file ( The syntax is documented for this) 3.> However what happens is that, even though sendmail correctly tries to use the smarthost for delivering all non - local mail, it does not try to AUTH before the MAIL FROM: ! I checked this using the '-X' option. It returns the non - local mail to me saying it gave a 505 - Authentication required error.

Incidentally, I had even tried to configure exim before this for the same situation. Even after making all the required configurations for exim, it would not AUTH itself to the smarthost.

I have tried to be lucid enough and hope to have explained the problem clearly. Has anyone out here experienced this before. If so what's the way out? ciao Abhijeet More

Here's my sendmail.mc file (generated using the sendmailconfig program) but I have removed the comments.

divert(0)dnl

define(`_USE_ETC_MAIL_')dnl include(`/usr/share/sendmail/cf/m4/cf.m4')dnl VERSIONID(`$Id: sendmail.mc, v 8.12.3-4 2002-04-15 17:35:56 cowboy Exp $') OSTYPE(`debian')dnl DOMAIN(`debian-mta')dnl LOCAL_CONFIG define(`SMART_HOST', `10.6.12.207')dnl FEATURE(`nocanonify')dnl FEATURE(`accept_unresolvable_domains')dnl FEATURE(`local_no_masquerade')dnl FEATURE(`authinfo')dnl LOCAL_CONFIG Cwmymachine.world.com FEATURE(`use_cw_file')dnl FEATURE(`use_ct_file')dnl FEATURE(`nouucp', `reject')dnl HACK(`nodns')dnl FEATURE(`smrsh')dnl define(`confME_TOO', True)dnl define(`confTO_QUEUEWARN', `1h')dnl define(`confTO_QUEUERETURN', `1d')dnl include(`/etc/mail/dialup.m4')dnl include(`/etc/mail/provider.m4')dnl MAILER_DEFINITIONS MAILER(local)dnl MAILER(smtp)dnl

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^End of sendmail.mc file