FreeBSD Sendmail Problem

Thanks for the help with my script issue recently. I was wondering if anyone has seen this problem with Sendmail? I aliased root to "taosecurity at gmail dot com" as shown below. (I used the real email address on the computer.) This is a fresh install of FreeBSD 8.1.

$ uname -a
FreeBSD vm.taosecurity.com 8.1-RELEASE FreeBSD 8.1-RELEASE #0: \
Mon Jul 19 02:55:53 UTC 2010    \
 root@almeida.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

vm# diff -u /etc/aliases /etc/aliases.orig 
--- /etc/aliases 2010-11-18 10:30:37.000000000 -0500
+++ /etc/aliases.orig 2010-11-18 10:30:26.000000000 -0500
@@ -18,7 +18,6 @@
 # root's email from here.
 
 # root: me@my.domain
-root: taosecurity at gmail dot com
 
 # Basic system aliases -- these MUST be present
 MAILER-DAEMON: postmaster
vm# newaliases 
/etc/mail/aliases: 28 aliases, longest 21 bytes, 300 bytes total

My /etc/mail and /var/spool directories are pristine from the factory"

vm# ls -al /etc/mail
total 300
drwxr-xr-x   2 root  wheel    512 Oct 31 11:28 .
drwxr-xr-x  20 root  wheel   2048 Nov 18 10:30 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   6818 Jul 18 22:25 Makefile
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   2905 Jul 18 22:25 README
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    634 Jul 18 22:25 access.sample
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   1695 Nov 18 10:30 aliases
-rw-r-----   1 root  wheel  65536 Nov 18 10:30 aliases.db
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  58276 Jul 18 22:25 freebsd.cf
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel   4118 Jul 18 22:25 freebsd.mc
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel  40751 Jul 18 22:25 freebsd.submit.cf
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel    901 Jul 18 22:25 freebsd.submit.mc
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel   5657 Jul 18 22:25 helpfile
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    409 Jul 18 22:25 mailer.conf
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    253 Jul 18 22:25 mailertable.sample
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel  58276 Jul 18 22:25 sendmail.cf
-r--r--r--   1 root  wheel  40751 Jul 18 22:25 submit.cf
-rw-r--r--   1 root  wheel    582 Jul 18 22:25 virtusertable.sample

vm# ls -al /var/spool
total 16
drwxr-xr-x   8 root   wheel   512 Jul 18 22:23 .
drwxr-xr-x  23 root   wheel   512 Nov 12 11:45 ..
drwxrwx---   2 smmsp  smmsp   512 Nov 18 10:00 clientmqueue
drwxrwxr-x   2 uucp   dialer  512 Nov 12 16:45 lock
drwxr-xr-x   2 root   daemon  512 Jul 18 22:23 lpd
drwxr-xr-x   2 root   daemon  512 Nov 18 10:31 mqueue
drwx------   2 root   daemon  512 Jul 18 22:23 opielocks
drwxr-xr-x   3 root   daemon  512 Jul 18 22:23 output

I can send email when testing as root (email addr "obfuscated"):

vm# date | sendmail -v -Am postmaster
postmaster... aliased to root
root... aliased to taosecurity at gmail dot com
taosecurity at gmail dot com... Connecting to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com. via esmtp...
220 mx.google.com ESMTP n10si1312258qcu.1
>>> EHLO vm.taosecurity.com
250-mx.google.com at your service, [98.218.35.11]
250-SIZE 35651584
250-8BITMIME
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250 PIPELINING
>>> MAIL From: SIZE=29
250 2.1.0 OK n10si1312258qcu.1
>>> RCPT To:
>>> DATA
250 2.1.5 OK n10si1312258qcu.1
354  Go ahead n10si1312258qcu.1
>>> .
250 2.0.0 OK 1290094272 n10si1312258qcu.1
taosecurity at gmail dot com... Sent (OK 1290094272 n10si1312258qcu.1)
Closing connection to gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com.
>>> QUIT
221 2.0.0 closing connection n10si1312258qcu.1

That worked. However, I cannot send email as a user:

$ date | sendmail -v -Am postmaster
postmaster... aliased to root
root... aliased to taosecurity at gmail.com
collect: Cannot write ./dfoAIFVDIG019327 (bfcommit, uid=1001, gid=25): Permission denied
queueup: cannot create queue file ./qfoAIFVDIG019327, euid=1001, fd=-1, fp=0x0: Permission denied

Behavior is the same on FreeBSD 7.3 with a fresh install.

I did a ton of research and usually found references to incorrect permissions, etc. In fact, in this post I got the idea to check directories using mtree:

r200a# mtree -p /var -e -U -f /etc/mtree/BSD.var.dist 
run changed
 permissions expected 0755 found 0777 modified
r200a# mtree -p /var -e -U -f /etc/mtree/BSD.sendmail.dist
./var missing (created)
./var/spool missing (created)
./var/spool/clientmqueue missing (created)

Computer r200a was another FreeBSD system where I tried to fix this problem. However, these changes made no difference.

Any ideas? Thank you.

Update: The reason I investigated this activity was I found errors like this in /var/log/messages on another FreeBSD system, r200b:

Nov 13 03:01:11 r200b sm-mta[40505]: oAD81AUR040505: Losing ./qfoAD81AUR040505: savemail panic
Nov 13 03:01:11 r200b sm-mta[40505]: oAD81AUR040505: SYSERR(root): savemail: cannot save rejected email anywhere

As you can see, whatever was trying to send email using sm-mta was failing.
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