The Monday 2004-09-20 at 01:17 -0400, Bob S wrote:
Theo, you stated:
That's not the problem, the problem was a DNS lookup failure according to the bounce message, Postfix couldn't find a place to drop the mail because the DNS didn't give it one, and so it returned the mail to sender. Please elaborate. Where and why couldn't Postfix find the DNS. The DNS for my ISP ? or for the recipient? And if so how do I check it? The DNS for my ISP is defined in PPP someplace.
The DNS is the domain name server specified in your machine network configuration. It can be fixed, or negotiated during dialup or dhcp. It can be external (the one or two specified by the ISP), or local. This DNS could not find the name postfix wanted to find, or the DNS server was not available.
Now, if I read the posts from Theo, I do not NEED an MTA - OK - understood ?? But I DO have Postfix. According to Patrick Postfix is needed internally by SuSE for things like mail for root etc. Good- OK Carlos says that Kmail actually uses Postfix to send it's mail. ( required?)
No, not "required". KMail can use the local postfix server, or sendmail, or qmail, or whatever. It can also use whatever MTA your ISP provides, or any other one - provided it allows you. A local MTA is only "required" for local delivery. But it can handle also "remote" delivery, which has some advantages and some inconvenients. As every thing in life and engineering :-)
And Patrick agrees, stating: >"Yes, he is mixing daemon with MTA. The MTA is still required/installed." ----- Or, only if it is there to use? But Kmail can actually do it all by itself? A little confused here !!
Kmail does not _need_ it. Local mail, sent by Yast when installing a package, or by a cron job when it has problems, or when hylafax receives a fax, etc, all these need a local MTA.
Alias root to your email account at your ISP and set your ISP's mail server as the relay_host and you should get any local mail in your normal mailbox. Scott, please elaborate; Alias root to my ISP ??? Do you mean connect with my ISP and change settings?? How is that possible ??
No, no, don't do that. Alias root to a local user. Scott Leighton explained how to do that in Yast, but use your local user name instead, not the address your ISP gave you.
Now, on to my final understanding: Carlos wrote:
The question is: Does Postfix have anything to do with Kmail??
It's a different program; however, postfix handles mail sent to it by kmail and others, and does the "real" sending.
OK, It is what it is - But only if Postfix is installed?????
Of course, if it is not installed it can do nothing, it doesn't exist :-P As I said, Kmail needs an SMTP server. It can be your local postfix or sendmail or qmail, or it can be another one on your intranet, or extranet, at your ISP, or at the other end of the world. It doesn't matter. It needs one, but you are not required to provide one on your machine.
And were the messages received by the server?
Your local machine server, yes. Remote or ISP server, no.
OK - are you saying my local server on my machine? That nothing was accepted by the ISP and that there was/is no record of that mail message at the ISP??
Perhaps I had a little mistake in reading the message. The sequence is as follows: Read carefully several times if needed: it is not so easy to follow if you are not habituated to this things. Not even for me ;-) Using KMail/1.7 you send an email to "eSupport.com" <Flashupgrades at esupport.com>, from Bob Stia <rnr at sanctum.com>, and dated Sun, 12 Sep 2004 21:43:35 -0400. It is handled by postfix at linux.local, 3 seconds later. The Fri, 17 Sep 2004 22:17:25 -0400 (EDT), postfix gives up (exactly five days later, plus half an hour), and sends an email notifying this fact, from MAILER-DAEMON@linux.local to rnr at sanctum.com. The reason given is a DNS failure. That is, for whatever reasons, it could not find the IP number of the destination machine at esupport.com. This is the only problem. It can be a misconfiguration at your side, or a network problem of some sort. It can even happen if the machine is unpowered, or without network connection, during those days. Or because you double boot to windows, I can't know. Notice that I'm following the "Received" headers, from bottom up - the most recent one is at the top of the message. I now analize the last (top) one: Received: from linux.local (pool-56.max4.marlowe.net [64.58.*.*] ) by SANCTUM.COM with ESMTP (IOA-IPAD 4.03g/96) id 75MX400 for <rnr at sanctum.com>; Sat, 18 Sep 2004 02:10:39 -0400 As I said, the report is sent to the original sender of the message, that is rnr at sanctum.com, ie, you. That address is external. The "received" header is read backwards (this is customary): The SMTP server at "SANCTUM.COM" (with software named "IOA-IPAD 4.03g/96") handled a message with ID "75MX400", that whas received from a machine that calls itself "linux.local", but that in fact is "pool-56.max4.marlowe.net", with IP such and such. This happened on "Sat, 18Sep 2004 02:10:39 -0400", that is, around four hours later that when postfix created the "return to sender" message we are seeing. This four hours delay might be because you were not connected during that interval. I assume that the message was now handled to the POP server of your ISP. This is not seen on the headers, I suppose because you clipped them. Finally, you fetch it back, read it, and start typing questions at us :-p It is possible to configure postfix so that it knows that nr at sanctum.com is you, and send it to your local user directly. Another day.
See, that is what confuses me. I download messages from my ISP and receive these "undelivered" messages. Are they not coming from the ISP?
For this message we are analyzing, yes, the final hoop is through your ISP.
Coming from my "local" server?
Yes as well - the initial part.
which coincidentally downloads the messages to me at the same time?
Not this time.
Are you saying my machine is holding the messages for six days and then notifying me they are undeliverable??
Yes. When it finally gives up, the message is returned to the sender, and thinking it is an external address, it is sent out, and you finally see it coming from your ISP account. But the "return to sender" was not generated there, nor was it delayed there. All that happened on your machine. Yes, because the reason is reported thus: | Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; Host or domain name not found. Name service error | for name=esupport.com type=MX: Host not found, try again Notice the "try again" part --------------------------^^^^^^^^ It is thought to be a temporary problem, and postfix obeyed, it tried again, and again, and again. You know, computers are very patient. They can not get angry or tired: they try and try and try till told to stop :-p Or told another way, they try for the preprogrammed time lapse, five days or whatever. If the problem had been reported to be permanent (permanent failure, non existent domain, for example), it would have given up immediately. Notice that some recipient machines take an antispam measure that consist in giving a temporary failure. I know they exist, I can not say that this is the case here. You could grep the mail log to find all instances of "3D54223317", that is the ID of the original message that could not be sent, to find out how many times it tried, and the reasons given each time. Look at '/var/log/mail' or '/var/log/mail.debug', depends on your setup.
even though it was stated that my messages were refused? and just now returned? and why if they had valid delivery addresses?
No, they were not refused, nor rejected. They were indeed returned because of unknown address.
Yes, but when??? When I sent them, or were they actually on the ISP server trying for six days?
No, on your local machine (linux.local). Your local machine was trying for 5 days and failing. See above for the times and dates. You can easily find out if this is happening right now. Type: mailq and a list of all mail pending delivery, and why, will be printed, in this format: mailID size dated From address (state, problem reason, whatever) To address or adresses (blank line) (next one)
Look carefully:
Subject: Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender
See? Returned.
Yes, again, but to who? my local server or to the ISP for resending ?
They are returned to you, the human person responsible, because you are the originator of the email, by your local postfix server. Just as a paper mail with an unknown destinatary - but here time outs are measured in months :-) It so happens that the return address is not recognised as local (your machine is named linux.local), so it is sent outsid. There, your ISP collects it and put it on your mail account.
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 2.63 (2004-01-11) on linux.local X-KMail-EncryptionState:
(spam check done on receipt, by kmail)
This is the Postfix program at host linux.local.
It is your local machine who is speaking, not the ISP.
OK - meaning ?? (explain the mechanics please)
Already done, I think, above.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.
Main problem: it could not deliver for some reason.
For further assistance, please send mail to <postmaster>
Notice that _you_ are the postmaster, so you have to give further assistance to the user - also you :-p
If, I assume what you are saying, is all on the local machine, where would I find these files??
What files?
And the problem was:
<Flashupgrades at esupport.com>: Host or domain name not found. Name service error for name=esupport.com type=MX: Host not found, try again
See? It could not find the host (machine) named "esupport.com". Notice the "try again" part: so it did, for six days, before giving up and returning the mail to the sender.
Again, from where? is it trying, internally on my own box, or out there on the ISP??
Internally. At the machine identified as "linux.local", that is, your machine.
Would like to know about this and should I be disabling Postfix somehow?
Disable Postfix? Why? postfix is working correctly.
Now, why did it say that "esupport.com" does not exist? That's a diferent problem. Try this on your machine that has the local postfix server:
Probably because of the blocking or pop before SMTP thing. As you said. "a different problem" (but certainly related though)
No, POP before SMTP has nothing to do here, for this particular email. It did not get out.
Anyway, thanks to all who contributed. Let's see what my ISP has to say about this.
In this case, probably not much, not their fault. Depends on how helpful they are, and how complacent with people running their own smtp servers (postfix) on linux. The only problem you have to solve is to find out why the internet name was not found. Why the DNS queries failed. I need to know more about your setup and what you did in those days with your machine plus networks - you know, Crystal balls are hard to get by, and they are out for repairs continuously :-P (ie, more in your logs and your head) -- Cheers, Carlos Robinson