In order for the WordPress emails to go out properly, I had to setup Sendmail to connect to my Internet Service Providers SMTP server.

More details after the cut.

For most hosted providers, Sendmail is automatically configured. However, if yo are hosting your server on a private machine at home like I am, with no mail server, you have to use your ISP to send mail.

Here are the instructions on how to do this on Fedora Core 6, with thanks to Dave Pavao.

– All of these steps are done as root.
– Install sendmail-cf:

yum install sendmail-cf

– Edit the sendmail.cf file:

vi /etc/mail/sendmail.mc
...
define(`SMART_HOST', `smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com')dnl
define(`confAUTH_MECHANISMS', `EXTERNAL GSSAPI DIGEST-MD5 CRAM-MD5 LOGIN PLAIN')dnl
FEATURE(`authinfo',`hash /etc/mail/isp-info')dnl
...

– Edit the rogers-info file, here juser and password are your credentials provided by Rogers:

vi /etc/mail/isp-info
AuthInfo:smtp-rog.mail.yahoo.com "U:juser@rogers.com" "I:juser@rogers.com" "P:password"

– Run make:

cd /etc/mail
make

– Create the isp-info.db file:

makemap hash /etc/mail/isp-info < /etc/mail/isp-info

- Restart sendmail:

service sendmail restart

That should be it.

Tagged geek, howto, Linux | Posted on Tuesday, January 16th, 2007 | Comments Off on Howto setup Sendmail to use ISP SMTP server