Mail not working and probably never has

Hi hopefully I am in the right forum

I am trying to get mail working on a 15 year old server which has probably never been configured to work before

The server is on a network with TCP installed and the different servers on this network can all see each other with ping and rsh

when I try this

# mailx -s "testzzz" "root@sys1"
test testz
EOT
# UX:mail: ERROR: Can't send to !cro_isp1!root (root@sys1)
UX:mail: ERROR: Return to root

the email error returned is this

From postmaster Fri Mar 25 10:16 GMT 2011
To: root@sys2
Date: Fri Mar 25 10:16:12 GMT 2011
Original-Date:  Fri Mar 25 10:16 GMT 2011
Original-Subject: testzzz
Not-Delivered-To: due to 11  Transfer Failure
     ORIGINAL MESSAGE ATTACHED
     (mail: Error # 22 'Surrogate command failed', rc = 11)
En-Route-To: !sys1!root
     ======= Surrogate command =======
     :/usr/bin/uux -aroot - sys1!rmail (root)
     ==== Start of stdout ===
     ==== Start of stderr ===
     :bad system name: sys1
     :uux failed ( 11 )
En-Route-To: !sys1!root
Content-Length: 122

If I do dthe same command from the local system but include the system name

mailx -s "testzzz" "tst@sys2"
tteesstt zz1017
EOT

This works

I am pretty sure mail to other systems has never worked on these boxes but would like to get it workling to set up some mail alerts

I have also tried sendmail but it does not seem to recognise that I am requesting mail to be sent to a different server and just sends it to the same user on the local server

There is not etc aliases file on these systems but the remote sytem is in the hosts file
This is the unix system detail if it helps

Welcome to the NCR MP-RAS SVR4 UNIX System
UNIX System V Release 4.0 
uname -a
sys2 sys2 4.0 3.0 3487/3488 Pentium III(TM)-ISA/PCI

Thanks in advance for any help

Dan

check if some mail process deamon are running

ps -ef | grep -i mail

(even if some deamon run, maybe they have never been setup in the past, so you should do it first)

I think you shoul first configure some mail deamon (you would have to know the network topology, you would need to know you SMTP gateway or relay, and have the required network route/port/firwall open accordingly.)

You can then configure your deamon (usually sendmail) so that i can send mail through this gateway.
At a very final test, you could try to send mail using mail/mailx commands or whatever.

Thanks for the reply. This is what I get
ps -ef|grep -i mail
root 2000 1 0 Mar 04 ? 0:00 /usr/lib/mail/surrcmd/smtpd -H ki2_isp1 -r
ki2_isp1 is the server it is on
I am not sure what you mean by network topology but for ease to get this working I am using servers all on the same flat network and there are no firewalls eq server 1 is 10.1.1.17 server 2 is 10.1.1.19 and there is only a hub between them no routes need to be setup. I am therefor assuming the SMTP gateway would be the IP address of the server I am on but do not know wher to set this up
I have read a bit on send mail and have initiated /etc/init.d/sendmail start and now when I do a ps -ef |grep -i mail i get
root 2000 1 0 Mar 04 ? 0:00 /usr/lib/mail/surrcmd/smtpd -H ki2_isp1 -r
root 10593 1 0 11:26:25 ? 0:00 /usr/ucblib/sendmail -bd -q30m but this process dies after a few mins but not sure where to look for errors
I have tried sending another mail while this process is still running
mail root@cro_isp1
fhfdsslkas
UX:mail: ERROR: Can't send to !cro_isp1!root (root@cro_isp1)
UX:mail: ERROR: Return to root
and get the above error and the bolw error in the email of the sending server
From postmaster Wed Apr 6 11:31 BST 2011
To: root
Date: Wed Apr 6 10:31:22 GMT 2011
Original-Date: Wed Apr 6 11:31 BST 2011
Not-Delivered-To: due to 11 Transfer Failure
ORIGINAL MESSAGE ATTACHED
(mail: Error # 22 'Surrogate command failed', rc = 11)
En-Route-To: !cro_isp1!root
======= Surrogate command =======
:/usr/bin/uux -aroot - cro_isp1!rmail (root)
==== Start of stdout ===
==== Start of stderr ===
:bad system name: cro_isp1
:uux failed ( 11 )
En-Route-To: !cro_isp1!root
Content-Length: 67
below is the proof that this system exists and that the destination server can be seen
PING cro_isp1 (10.1.1.19): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from cro_isp1 (10.1.1.19): icmp_seq=0 ttl=64 time=0 ms
64 bytes from cro_isp1 (10.1.1.19): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=0 ms
64 bytes from cro_isp1 (10.1.1.19): icmp_seq=2 ttl=64 time=0 ms

--- cro_isp1 ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max = 0/0/0 ms
Hope this is not too much info regards Dan

Maybe you can have a look at this link and look for surrcmd keyword or just read all

@ctsgnb Creat link
Worth reading the first section:
Subject: M1) What is the default Mailer on UnixWare?

The error messages you are receiving suggest to me that this server is configured for uucp mail. Messages mention "/usr/bin/uux" which is part of the original AT&T unix communications package. The address format includes exclamation marks.

The transport for uucp does not have to be TCP/IP . Recommend you find out what you have go before changing settings.