Hi Randall Randall R Schulz wrote:

After attempting configuration via YaST's "Mail Transfer Agent" module, I find that when I try to send mail it fails. What's odd is that the failure notification gets through (I sent a test message from the command line as root using the "mail" command and root's mail is forwarded to the remote account which I subsequently receive). However, the message I tried to send (sent directly to the same address to which root's mail is redirected) does not arrive.

Afaik there is no difference between sending and redirecting. Are you using a smtp-relay or do you send directly?

Have you any hints or suggestions about what the problem is or how I might diagnose this anomaly?

What does /var/log/mail says?

Randall Schulz

Cheers Peter -- aedon DESIGNS http://www.foto-hochzeitsalbum.de/ http://www.hochzeitsbuch.info/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Monday April 6 2009, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Monday 06 April 2009 18:08:02 Randall R Schulz wrote:

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The bounce gets through you say. What did it say? What was the error you got?

This is the bounce (just what copies in the message display in KMail): -==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==- This is the mail system at host smiley.fayette208. I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below. For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster. If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.                    The mail system : host mail.sonic.net[64.142.7.162] said: 553 5.1.8     ... Domain of sender address root@smiley.fayette208     does not exist (in reply to MAIL FROM command) unnamed Delivery report Encapsulated message Test From: root To: rschulz@sonic.net Date: 2009-04-06@10:35   TestTestTestTestTest End of encapsulated message -==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==--==-

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Have you any hints or suggestions about what the problem is or how I might diagnose this anomaly?

Echo Peter, what do you get in /var/log/mail

Owing to the very long lines, I attached a text file holding those lines added to the log file for one attempt to send one message using the "mail" command (at a shell prompt).

Anders

Randall Schulz

On Monday April 6 2009, Anders Johansson wrote:

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Aha, so the remote email system doesn't accept email from made up domains. The bounce goes through because it is sent from an empty address <>, so no domain check there.

Looks like you may have to give your mail server a proper domain name, to get past the security checks at sonic.com

Can I get the primary outgoing mail to use the empty domain the way the bounces do? I see these FROM_HEADER and POSTFIX_MASQUERADE_DOMAIN parameters whose descriptions suggest vaguely that this could be done. (It's sonic.net, by the way.)

Anders

Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Sandy Drobic wrote:

Randall R Schulz wrote:

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Aha, so the remote email system doesn't accept email from made up domains. The bounce goes through because it is sent from an empty address <>, so no domain check there.

Looks like you may have to give your mail server a proper domain name, to get past the security checks at sonic.com Can I get the primary outgoing mail to use the empty domain the way the bounces do? I see these FROM_HEADER and POSTFIX_MASQUERADE_DOMAIN

On Monday April 6 2009, Anders Johansson wrote: parameters whose descriptions suggest vaguely that this could be done.

The best way to do this is to configure the system correctly, then mail won't be lost. If you use the empty address as the sender address then mail will be lost if it can't be delivered.

You said, that the bounce was getting through, so why don't you use that address as the sender address?

Bleah! That was supposed to be the recipient address, of course. -- Sandy List replies only please! Please address PMs to: news-reply2 (@) japantest (.) homelinux (.) com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2009-04-06 at 11:05 -0700, Randall R Schulz wrote:

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Looks like you may have to give your mail server a proper domain name, to get past the security checks at sonic.com

Can I get the primary outgoing mail to use the empty domain the way the bounces do? I see these FROM_HEADER and POSTFIX_MASQUERADE_DOMAIN parameters whose descriptions suggest vaguely that this could be done.

Nop. You need to do two things, IMO: a) Send the email with an existing "from" address (a valid return address is needed in order to be able to bounce or return the email if there is a problem). You could use the same destination address in the from. b) Configure postfix so that it authenticates to the remote server using your ISP login/pass - provided they use that method. How to do a), I'm unsure. Perhaps deliver locally and use a forward rule, perhaps using procmail and formail to change the from. Maybe there is an easier way via postfix map files :-? Sandy will know that. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAknaW5sACgkQtTMYHG2NR9Va2ACfXQUAQTVpwavUP5Cq+UVBDzm4 vucAn05zqXua0qeZxTqsKKMNBXBxsfVP =nW8A -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2009-04-06 at 13:21 -0700, Randall R Schulz wrote:

Alright, messrs. spoilsport. No hacks today.

You know how hard it is to invent good names for things? And now I have to invent a name for my online existence _and_ it has to be available in the DNS system!

ROTFL! X'-) I'll be a bit more of a spoilsport. That DNS name needs to have an MX field or it will not, or may not, work. Some servers may require that it also has rDNS, and some that the rDNS and DNS are matching. My suggestion is simply to change the outgoing mail so that it has: From: root <...@sonic.net> To: Randall <...@sonic.net> but I'm not sure how best to do that. Should be simple. Part b) is just the same configuration as is needed if you want postfix to send mail from <...@sonic.net> instead of using KMail's configuration. If you want to do that I'll tell you how, as it is my setup (and then, if you want, you can also tell KMail to use postfix instead). - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAknahiIACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UGFACfa2Feu3E5XjAkqx/rliV0a+gD 9zQAnAg+CeRgUZYN4zUkud2iCo/zYnpC =2r/E -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2009-04-06 at 16:45 -0700, Randall R Schulz wrote:

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My suggestion is simply to change the outgoing mail so that it has:

From: root <...@sonic.net> To: Randall <...@sonic.net>

but I'm not sure how best to do that. Should be simple.

Remember, the whole point of this exercise was to get system mail (originating from rkhunter & secchk, mostly) sent to me on my primary system and not to root or another local mailbox on the secondary system.

I know that.

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Part b) is just the same configuration as is needed if you want postfix to send mail from <...@sonic.net> instead of using KMail's configuration. If you want to do that I'll tell you how, as it is my setup (and then, if you want, you can also tell KMail to use postfix instead).

As per above, this mail is not originating from a conventional interactive MUA, but rather from a system-level entity (whatever exactly that is in an openSUSE 11.1 installation).

I know that, too.

The intermediate system (the mail servers of my ISP, Sonic.net) use SMTP authentication and I configured that (I think successfully) into the YaST's MTA setup module.

Then test that part. Use: ...~> mail -s "test subject email" \ -r yourrealfromaddress yourrealtoaddress some dummy text and a lone dot . ...~> and see if postfix can send it correctly. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAknalvMACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XFSgCfTmzpdKvyYVyY2Wm62cm4TFOg Jn4AnRcZlzLTShgSTvth1oR6yRd62fKl =CNNV -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Hi! On Monday 06 April 2009 20:05:44 Randall R Schulz wrote:

Can I get the primary outgoing mail to use the empty domain the way the bounces do? I see these FROM_HEADER and POSTFIX_MASQUERADE_DOMAIN parameters whose descriptions suggest vaguely that this could be done.

Just have it use the fully qualified domain name of the server and you are fine. Seems like the hostname is somehow configured strange. Regards, Matthias

On 04/07/2009 09:03 PM, Randall R Schulz wrote:

On Tuesday April 7 2009, Matthias Bach wrote:

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Hi!

On Monday 06 April 2009 20:05:44 Randall R Schulz wrote:

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Can I get the primary outgoing mail to use the empty domain the way the bounces do? I see these FROM_HEADER and POSTFIX_MASQUERADE_DOMAIN parameters whose descriptions suggest vaguely that this could be done.

Just have it use the fully qualified domain name of the server and you are fine. Seems like the hostname is somehow configured strange.

It's made up. I own no domains.

Having had some time to think, if you use the Yast MTA module, masquerade, it allows the sending of local mail to an external internet email address. That module edits sender_canonical in postfix. By your subject, that is what you are wanting. From memory, your ISP rejected the mail because of its spam checks. To get around the sending domain problem, you will need to edit generic manually and add generic to POSTFIX_MAP_LIST, then run SuSEconfig (or postmap generic). At least that works for me. HTH. -- Joe Morris Registered Linux user 231871 running openSUSE 11.1 x86_64 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Per Jessen wrote:

Joe Morris wrote:

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From memory, your ISP rejected the mail because of its spam checks.

It's more of a sanity check - on the public internet it's quite reasonable to reject mails coming from addresses that cannot be identified.

To use the correct terms, the mail is rejected because the sender address is undeliverable. If the mail bounces it can not be sent back to the sender address. The server prevents this by rejecting undeliverable sender domains. It's a cheap and sensible check (just a dns query) compared to the sender address verification that checks if the exact sender address is deliverable. The latter method is currently mostly regarded as dangerous because it queries third-party servers and might lead do a ddos situation if the number of spams are so high that the third-party server can't cope anymore with the number of address probes. -- Sandy List replies only please! Please address PMs to: news-reply2 (@) japantest (.) homelinux (.) com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Hi! On Tuesday 07 April 2009 15:03:53 Randall R Schulz wrote:

On Tuesday April 7 2009, Matthias Bach wrote:

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Hi!

On Monday 06 April 2009 20:05:44 Randall R Schulz wrote:

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Can I get the primary outgoing mail to use the empty domain the way the bounces do? I see these FROM_HEADER and POSTFIX_MASQUERADE_DOMAIN parameters whose descriptions suggest vaguely that this could be done.

Just have it use the fully qualified domain name of the server and you are fine. Seems like the hostname is somehow configured strange.

It's made up. I own no domains.

As this was a server I assumed it would get a constant FQDN by the provider. Those are most times not the prettiest but work fine for sending mail and having a constant name to log into the server. Regards, Matthias

On Tuesday April 7 2009, Randall R Schulz wrote:

On Tuesday April 7 2009, Matthias Bach wrote:

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As this was a server I assumed it would get a constant FQDN by the provider. Those are most times not the prettiest but work fine for sending mail and having a constant name to log into the server.

That's right! I never thought of that. There is such an ISP-assigned DNS name (it is a static IP address, in fact).

It seems Postfix won't accept a "myhostname" that is "numeric," as these ISP-generated names often are. Offhand, I don't see an option that relaxes that requirement. Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

On Tuesday April 7 2009, Anders Johansson wrote:

On Tuesday 07 April 2009 20:39:08 Randall R Schulz wrote:

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It seems Postfix won't accept a "myhostname" that is "numeric," as these ISP-generated names often are. Offhand, I don't see an option that relaxes that requirement.

I believe the hostname is more or less irrelevant, it is the domain name that matters here. You need to proper domain name

Actually, as I was grabbing at various straws in my ignorance, I got a variety of diagnostics, among which was the one about an invalid numeric name. However, what I didn't consider was the implications of "invalid delimiter." Apparently that was elicited by a trailing dot on the host name (which is technically valid for DNS names, by the way). So the name that _does_ resolve with my ISP (the "synthetic" FQDN) does work in Postfix if I strip the trailing dot. What's more, sending mail now works.

As for its being numeric, I believe the first character has to be a normal character, and after that numbers, characters and various other signs can follow

Yeah, that was a red herring. Even with the leading digit, it accepts it.

By the way, I suspect that a valid alternative here is to configure your postfix to use sonic.net as a relay, and authenticate to it. You might be sending emails with invalid domains then, but you'd be sending them to yourself, which I think they'll let you get away with

This part had been the case all along.

I also suspect that if you authenticate with the smtp server, you can bypass many of the other security restrictions. It's the way these things are normally configured

Likewise.

Anders

Thanks everyone. I've got what I wanted, and didn't have to buy a domain to get it. Randall Schulz -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tuesday, 2009-04-07 at 21:07 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:

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This part had been the case all along.

Really? You were authenticating with the smtp server using your regular smtp login that you use for sending email?

That surprises me.

Not me. The ISP said:

Domain of sender address root@smiley.fayette208 does not exist (in reply to MAIL FROM command))

It doesn't get to the point of asking for authentication. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAknbpqAACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UuEwCfaQjqq76Zq9KGnEAGTVMqg/xI h6oAni+Eb7txxXcggDq5fHff9MiQ1Gqb =Cy34 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tuesday, 2009-04-07 at 21:19 +0200, Anders Johansson wrote:

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The ISP said:

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Domain of sender address root@smiley.fayette208 does not exist (in reply to MAIL FROM command))

It doesn't get to the point of asking for authentication.

The authentication normally comes in long before that. If you try to authenticate, the mail server won't talk to you about MAIL FROM or RCPT TO until you've successfully logged in

Depends. My setup only tries to authenticate if the "from" address matches the server; if the from address is different, it will not try to authenticate, which would be the case. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2.0.9 (GNU/Linux) iEYEARECAAYFAknbr2wACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UT8ACfd7DqUEU/2t3FteeP1WiulcCt 6LoAnjHNlzHUolZUbaLQsaqNRvLFzrmT =wVzd -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org

Randall R Schulz wrote:

On Tuesday April 7 2009, Anders Johansson wrote:

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On Tuesday 07 April 2009 20:39:08 Randall R Schulz wrote:

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It seems Postfix won't accept a "myhostname" that is "numeric," as these ISP-generated names often are. Offhand, I don't see an option that relaxes that requirement. I believe the hostname is more or less irrelevant, it is the domain name that matters here. You need to proper domain name

Actually, as I was grabbing at various straws in my ignorance, I got a variety of diagnostics, among which was the one about an invalid numeric name. However, what I didn't consider was the implications of "invalid delimiter." Apparently that was elicited by a trailing dot on the host name (which is technically valid for DNS names, by the way).

So the name that _does_ resolve with my ISP (the "synthetic" FQDN) does work in Postfix if I strip the trailing dot.

What's more, sending mail now works.

Very good. Postfix uses the value of $myorigin to qualify incomplete addresses. By default this is: postconf -d myorigin myorigin = $myhostname So the myhostname setting does have some relevance, though you can always set myorigin manually. -- Sandy List replies only please! Please address PMs to: news-reply2 (@) japantest (.) homelinux (.) com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org