After moving my previously working SMTP mail server from an work location to my residence, I spend several days trying to figure out why my mail server no longer worked.  Even though test through sendmail in verbose mode told me the email was going through, the qmail command told me that the connection timed out.  Apparently, Bellsouth blocks port 25 and you must route email through their server.   I was able to finally get it work by defining a SmartHost directive in the sendmail.mc, recompiling the sendmail file and restarting the sendmail service.

All it took was opening

/etc/mail/sendmail.mc

adding/changing:

define(`SMART_HOST',`[mail.bellsouth.net]‘)

and then reseeting the sendmail config via:

make -C /etc/mail
service sendmail restart

Now any mail sent from my machine (system status, php’s mail function, etc) will be routed through my isp’s mail server.