[Mailman-Users] Need some help with Mailman and Sendmail

[Matt Starnes]

You went past me with the MX records.  I've heard of them, but I'm not
totally sure whay they are.  Basically we have two separate SMTP/POP3
servers, one running NT with Netscape software that is mail.ltlb.com, and one
that is sendmail/qpopper on RH Linux 6.1.  Emails to ltlb.com or
mail.ltlb.com are handled by the NT box.  I had Mailman working before until
I updated to RH 6.1 which installed Sendmail with SMRSH "feature" which
immediately broke many programs we have that route through sendmail.  And the
unix.ltlb.com box can send and receive standard email no problem.  I think it
is a smrsh problem, but I can't nail it down.

Matt

Virginia Beauregard wrote:

> On Tue, 25 Jul 2000, Matt Starnes wrote:
>
> > test: "|/etc/smrsh/wrapper post test"
> > test-admin: "|/etc/smrsh/wrapper mailowner test"
> > test-request: "|/etc/smrsh/wrapper mailcmd test"
> > test-owner:  test-admin
> >
> > I have linked /etc/smrsh/wrapper /home/mailman/mail/wrapper
>
> As others have mentioned, this is really the backwards way of doing
> things, and will likely confuse other administrators, but is not
> inherently a problem.
>
> >    ----- Transcript of session follows -----
> > 553 unix.ltlb.com. config error: mail loops back to me (MX problem?)
> > 554 <test-request at unix.ltlb.com>... Local configuration error
>
> This is entirely a Sendmail misconfiguration problem.  I noticed your mail
> came from @mail.ltlb.com, while this is coming from @unix.ltlb.com.  From
> poking around, I notice you only have MX records for your domain
> (ltlb.com), not either of these hosts (mail.ltlb.com or unix.ltlb.com).
> If you have Sendmail configured to do masquerading properly this may not
> be a problem, but it is a good idea to have MX records for all hosts which
> mail may appears as addressed from.
>
> Secondly, and this is where I think the problem lies, from what I gather
> from this error message and poking around in your DNS, unix.ltlb.com
> should connect to mail.ltlb.com to deliver it's mail, correct?  Is
> unix.ltlb.com in mail.ltlb.com's /etc/mail/local-host-names?  This is the
> Sendmail's replacement (in versions >8.9) for what used to be
> /etc/sendmail.cw; it is the list of hosts for whom you can accept mail. If
> unix.ltlb.com is not listed here, mail.ltlb.com will not accept mail for
> it, at which point it will bounce back to unix.ltlb.com, thus looping as
> the error message reports.
>
> In addition, the O'Reilly DNS & BIND book points out another possible
> misconfiguration here: you should always use the canonical name of the
> host as the MX record.  However, I can't really tell if you are in fact
> doing this, because your DNS seems to have just flapped.  :( I also
> reasonably sure that you can get around this limitation with
> /etc/mail/local-host-names.
>
> I hope these suggestions are helpful.  The rule I always go by when trying
> to debug a Sendmail problem is "Have you checked
> /etc/mail/local-host-names"?  It's very often the cause of your troubles.
>
> --
> Virginia J. Beauregard                            virginia at texterity.com
> UNIX Systems and Network Administrator                   Texterity, Inc.
>
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