in reply to Searching for working Sendmail

Update: Maybe 'sendmail -bv to:test@test.com'?

Not a great idea - for starters, "test.com" is a valid domain name, this mail will try to deliver. Consider also that even if you send mail to an invalid address it will generate a "bounce" or failure notice, and some poor admin somewhere is going to have to do something with those.

If you're going to send test messages, at least send them to an account you monitor - this way, not only will you know it's working, you'll be the only victim if it runs amok, which is much nicer than victimizing some other random address.

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Re^2: Searching for working Sendmail
by cosmicperl (Chaplain) on Feb 17, 2009 at 01:37 UTC
    Sorry but I had to down vote you for that. Here is the -bv flag from sendmail man:-
    -bv    Do not collect or deliver a message.  Instead, send  an email r
+eport after verifying each recipient address. This is useful for test
+ing address rewriting and routing configurations.

    [download]
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[d/l]
      I'll take that downvote - that's what I get for posting before coffee first thing in the morning. :-)

      BUT - "sendmail -bv" still sends mail. A DSN is sent back to the user who ran the command - and that address is even less clear! Probably just $USER from whatever environment spawned sendmail, but the manpage doesn't seem to say.

      Also, in generating the DSN, sendmail follows its delivery rules - so -bv to test@test.com is going to generate network traffic (SMTP dialog up to "RCPT TO" it looks like), possibly directly to test.com, depending on how the local sendmail is configured. Enough stuff like that in the logs never looks good.

      So how about I leave it at this: any time you're writing a program to send email, be extra careful about what addresses the mail is To and From, because when things go wrong you may never notice.

      And I get to learn something new about sendmail today. :-)
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