How to configure sendmail outgoing server

franztini said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

Just in case anyone was having the same problem as me and could not find ANY documentation on godaddy, I thought I would post.

Problem: Could send and receive email from outside domains (i.e., gmail.com) using squirrelmail. When using Thunderbird (or any other desktop/smartphone/ipad email client), could only receive email but could not send email to any outside domain.

Fix: Add the following to your Sendmail M4 configuration:
Define define(SMART_HOST',p3smtpout.secureserver.net’)dnl

Rebuild your configuration. Restart SendMail and you are good to go. This should be a standard ‘Getting Started’ doc for Godaddy.

chrisg said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

@franztini,

Thank you for taking the time to share this information. I am sure this should beneficial to any other members using our Virtual Dedicated Server accounts for sendmail purposes.

I will be sure to forward these details over to the appropriate department who can address adding this to our ‘Getting Started’ Documentation.

Christopher G.

chrisl said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

Hmm … looks like my last post failed. I’ll re-post, but briefly.

Configuring smart hosts is a good idea, but is also kind of a “last resort” when sending email. Other options that should work (and perhaps should also be documented) include:

- If using a non-webmail client like Thunderbird, configure the client to use an SMTP server that is run by the organization that owns your physical internet connection. So, if you are on a smartphone, get an SMTP connection from your service provider. If you are on your home network, get one from your ISP.

- The suggestion above can be a hassle on a mobile computer that switches networks frequently. On computers such as these, avoid the issue entirely by using the webmail interface.

If Go Daddy adds the smart host information to the “Getting Started” documentation, we should flesh out all three ideas rather than including only the smart hosts information.

Travis said 9 months, 3 weeks ago:

@franztini,
Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention!

We’ve looked at this issue and how it may have happened and based on our findings, we will be making changes to how we configure new servers.

We have always configured sendmail by directly editing sendmail.cf (apparently not a best practice). If you rebuild sendmail.cf using ‘m4 sendmail.mc > /etc/sendmail.cf’, those configuration settings previously made are lost.

At this point, the best we can surmise is that sendmail.cf was rebuilt the previously set configuration was overwritten. In the near future, we will be changing the way we configure new servers to use sendmail.mc so that the SMART_HOST will be set to the appropriate relay and will be retained if sendmail.cf is rebuilt.

Again, thank you so much for sharing!