sendmail startup is slow

[RedHat123]

ok, im a a sendmail newbie. ive been searching but havent really found info that has proved to speed up things. sendmail started up fast before i started monkeying with it, however, all i did was to add my isp address on the line in the sendmail.mc file
dnl define(`SMART_HOST',`smtp.myisphere.net')

now that ive done that i can run my little php test scripts that send email via my isp's smtp server. trouble is now, sometimes sending mail is very slow and sendmail itself takes forever to startup at boot time.

any suggestions on what to check ?

[RedHat123]

im following along with this information, which is pretty good by the way
http://info.ccone.at/INFO/RH-sendmail-HOWTO/c239.html

now, why can i not locate my cf.m4 file ?

when i make chages to my sendmail.mc file and then try to run the command
m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

i get the nasty message
m4: Cannot open /usr/share/sendmail-cf/m4/cf.m4: No such file or directory

Well, duh, thats because there doesnt seem to be a /usr/share/sendmail-cf/m4/cf.m4 file

help ???
:confused:

[jumpedintothefire]

Sounds like your distro is rpm based (redhat right?), can you do a "rpm -qa | grep sendmail"
ie:
[root@tester jerry]# rpm -qa | grep sendmail
sendmail-devel-8.13.1-2
sendmail-8.13.1-2
sendmail-cf-8.13.1-2

The cf files are in a seperate rpm, just may need to install it.

Your startup delay is most likey from sendmail not being able to resolve its own name, what do you have in /etc/hosts?