Home / server / Questions / 59602
In Process
Shore
Asked: 2009-08-28 07:46:40 +0800 CST

Where to check log of sendmail?

  • 772

I can't send out emails,

need to look into the logs,

but where is the log?

sendmail

7 Answers

  1. 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
    • 99

  2. 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 ~]#
    • 24

  3. Try looking at /var/log/mail.info or /var/log/mail.err

    • 5

  4. also check /var/spool/mqueue for current cached outgoing mail

    • 3

  5. 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.

    • 3 
  6. /var/log/maillog
    • 2

  7. 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
    • -1