[Mailman-Users] email bouncing back to sender...(part deux)...

[Nathan K. Stazewski]

We have mailman running again today...and back to the same old
thing...accepting only our campus mail and aol...no one else (for the
first time in history aol is working when other stuff isn't).  I was
wondering how I can tell if the host name has changed.  I have no idea
what is was, and even if I found the new host name, I wouldn't know
where to change it.  You mention a config file for mailman...what's the
name of the file?  Also, messages are NOT being bounced.  They are
coming in (our IT person sees them going into postfix and being handed
to mailman)...and it's there that we lose them.  I'm currently looking
through logs, but I thought I'd send this much of an update.  Thanks for
all the help so far.

__________________________________

Nathan K. Stazewski
Assistant Director
Alumni Relations
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore PA  19081
610-957-6103
Fax:  610-328-7796
www.swarthmore.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Barrett [mailto:r.barrett at openinfo.co.uk] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 07, 2004 7:30 PM
To: Nathan K. Stazewski
Cc: mailman-users at python.org
Subject: Re: [Mailman-Users] email bouncing back to sender...(part
deux)...

On 7 Sep 2004, at 18:30, Nathan K. Stazewski wrote:

> OK, yesterday I asked about why our mailman client wasn't accepting 
> emails.
> The problem was that the physical computer had been moved, so it had
> attained a new IP and port 25 was being blocked at that IP by our 
> firewall.
> Our IT has since changed the directing, and it seems that everything
is
> directing to the new IP and the port can now be telnetted to, so I 
> figure
> that must be working.  What else needs to be changed though?

If the hostname is still the same then you may not need to change the 
Mailman config file.

>  Right
> afterward these changes had been made, I was able to send emails from 
> on our
> campus and they went through.  Then I tried to send from AOL.went
> through.tried from hotmail and another college's server.neither shows 
> up and
> they're not pending.  After sending about 15 test emails.all emails 
> stopped
> coming through.no matter where I send them from.  Is there anything on

> the
> Mac that I need to change since the IP is different?

What has changed hostname or its IP number? Which of either or both?

>  I was told that I
> needed an MX record published, and I have never even heard of this.

An MX DNS record is not strictly necessary if the machine concerned has 
a public IP number and an DNS A record is published for it, which it 
is. I have now been able to telnet to port 25 on 
alumni-office.swarthmore.edu from outside your domain which was not 
possible before.

>  I
> googled it and got the gist of it.but haven't a clue if I still need 
> to do
> that after other stuff was fixed.  I apologize for my ignorance.but 
> this is
> being run from a Mac and the only person that had anything to do with 
> this
> listserv no longer works here, so all I know is that it's a Mailman 
> client
> using postfix.
>

If these message that you are talking about are not being bounced then 
you need to try and see what is being recorded by the machine's MTA in 
its log (maybe /var/mail/log) and in the Mailman server's logs (sorry I 
do not know where they are stored on a MacOS X installation). The MTA 
log may say whether or not the messages are being received and 
delivered to Mailman or not. The Mailman logs may give some idea of the 
disposition of the messages; take a look at the post, smtp, 
smtp-failure and vette logs. You are looking to see if you can track 
incoming messages to the MTA->to Mailman->back out via the MTA. You 
also want to look in the Mailman qfiles/* subdirectories which may show 
whether files are being trapped in a queue for some reason.

If these new messages are being bounced then what does the bounce 
message say?

Maybe someone else here with MacOS X experience can advise on possible 
problems/causes/things to look for which are Mac'ish.

>
> Again.the server in question is alumni-office.swarthmore.edu.  Thanks 
> so
> much in advance.