Hello again, I have been stuck, able to 'send email' from mail clients, unable to use sendmail for systems logs etc. I think dns is OK, but still get errors dsn 5.6.0 stat="Data Format Error" Alexander pointed out I should not test as root. I did not think it would matter, as the sendmail daemon is root anyway, but thank you. Also I know I need authinfo, this I think I am providing. But I tried 'telnet smtp.aol.com 25' and 'telnet my-employer 25' and saw somthing very odd. The connect message is: 220 smtp-los01.proxy.aol.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.11/8.12.11; Fri, 11 Mar 2005 02:53:43 -0500 for any host I connect to, with the los01 number maybe changing. Somehow I get redirected to AOL whenever I use port 25. Does this ring a bell with anyone? [Recall..I can send email from evolution] If I go a dns lookup this is not the expected route. Thanks! Bill