There is definitively something wrong with my configuration on Redhat 9 which worked fine with Redhat 7.3. I have to restart sendmail to have the queue processed basically. I don't have this problem at work where I have an ethernet connection at boot time. At home, I use a dial up connection and I have to initiate it. That didn't make a difference for sendmail in the past. So I'm still puzzled. myriam