To setup email on Centos 6 run these commands
yum -y install sendmail mailutils
chkconfig --levels 235 sendmail on
service sendmail restart
To send a test email
echo "test message" | mail -s "test subject" [email protected]
Hosts File
Modify your hosts file and add $HOSTNAME.local to prevent issues (in example below we are using hostname monitor)
<your ip address> monitor monitor.local
service sendmail restart
Why Do I Need a FQDN in Hosts File?
i see users post this over and over – “sendmail hangs” or “sendmail takes forever to load”
the problem is that sendmail is looking for a FQDN, and it is probably finding your hostname before localhost and localhost.localdomain
your host file entry should have your simple hostname after the others:
/etc/hosts
127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost myhostname <— order matters!!!
if done this way, sendmail sees a FQDN for your loopback interface and will breeze right through.