Still no sendmail - but a clue?

   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