How to Verify Connections to Other Systems

To verify connections to other systems, you can use the mconnect program to open connections to other sendmail systems over the network. The mconnect program runs interactively. You can issue various diagnostic commands. See the mconnect(1) man page for a complete description. The following example verifies that mail to the user name shamira is deliverable.

$ mconnect phoenix
connecting to host phoenix (129.144.52.96), port 25
connection open
220 phoenix.Eng.Acme.COM Sendmail 8.9.0+Sun/8.9.0; Tue, 25 Jul 1998 10:45:28 -0700
vrfy sandy
250 Sandy Smith <sandy@phoenix.Eng.Acme.COM>
>

If you cannot use mconnect to connect to an SMTP port, check these conditions:

• Is the system load too high?

• Is the sendmail daemon running?

• Does the system have the appropriate /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file?

• Is port 25 (the port that sendmail uses) active?