[Mailman-Users] Mailman's idea of localhost

[Nigel Metheringham]

I have found an interesting feature of mailman regarding where it sends 
its SMTP mail to.

Background:  The exim.org list handler failed over the weekend, helped 
by some abnormal web loads.  A new (bigger) box was prepared and 
swapped in, all content was carried over, but the system refused to 
send mail.

I finally discovered that although the SmtpHost was set to localhost 
(which maps in the hosts file to 127.0.0.1), Mailman appeared to be 
attempting to connect to the IP address returned by a lookup on the 
current hostname - in this case the hostname was set to a temporary 
value during the rebuild and had no hosts or DNS A record.  This caused 
all mail send out by mailman to fail.

The fix is to make sure that there is a mapping in your hosts file for 
the machine hostname as returned by hostname or uname.

	Nigel.
-- 
[ - Opinions expressed are personal and may not be shared by VData - ]
[ Nigel Metheringham                  Nigel.Metheringham at VData.co.uk ]
[ Phone: +44 1423 850000                         Fax +44 1423 858866 ]