NOQUEUE message in mail.log

[Michael Elleby III]

We have an application that runs on the same server as sendmail, but are receiving this message:

Jun 26 08:15:21 vacpp7 sendmail[26766]: NOQUEUE: timeout waiting for input from vacpp7 during server cmd read
Jun 26 08:15:21 vacpp7 sendmail[26766]: NOQUEUE: Null connection from vacpp7 [90.73.48.41]

Is it because the remote SMTP connection is not actually sending a message?

Thanx.

[Kirk Gardner]

Michael, you have it exactly right.

A null connection represents the lack of a standard smtp command from the client. One of the following commands are expected or a null connection status message occurs.
MAIL
EXPN
VRFY
ETRN

An example of how to cause this is to telnet port 25 and issue a quit. A null connection will then occur:

# telnet XXXX 25
Trying...
Connected to XXXX.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 XXXX.XXXX.hp.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.9.3/8.9.3; Tue, 26 Jun 2001 15:34:15
-0400 (EDT)
quit
221 XXXX.XXXX.hp.com closing connection
Connection closed by foreign host.

# tail -2 /var/adm/syslog/mail.log
Jun 26 15:31:49 XXXX sendmail[10190]: NOQUEUE: Null connection from XXXX [
999.999.999.999]
Jun 26 15:34:17 XXXX sendmail[10237]: NOQUEUE: Null connection from XXXX [
999.999.999.999]

Kirk Gardner - IA-64 Engineer (HPUX Sys Adm)