Sendmail deferring emails

[Nick Zraika]

Don't we love these! Finger pointing taking place all round. Okay, this is the deal, we have 2 servers HP-UX 11.11, both had sendmail working no problems for over a year, nothing has changed on the server "at-all", all the sudden after a power outage on the weekend both servers can no longer sendmail. I'm trying to build up a "good case" with good amunition here from the experts to "prove" inocence at the HP/OS side of things. Please help.
I have done the following so far:
- checked hosts file,nsswitch,resolv.conf and the sendmail.cf file etc etc all have not been touched and look okay.

i ran a debug test see below:

hpbst10:root@ /etc/mail>sendmail -v -d8.99 nickz@datacom.com.au
dns_getcanonname(ge.com, trymx=1)
dns_getcanonname: trying ge.com. (ANY)
;; res_querydomain(ge.com, , 1, 255)
;; res_query(ge.com., 1, 255)
;; Querying server (# 1) address = 3.248.176.9
;; Querying server (# 1) address = 3.248.176.9
;; Querying server (# 1) address = 3.248.176.9
;; Querying server (# 1) address = 3.248.176.9
;; res_query: send error
NO: errno=238, h_errno=2
ge.com: Name server timeout
dns_getcanonname(datacom.com.au, trymx=1)
dns_getcanonname: trying datacom.com.au. (ANY)
;; res_querydomain(datacom.com.au, , 1, 255)
;; res_query(datacom.com.au., 1, 255)
;; Querying server (# 1) address = 3.248.176.9
;; Querying server (# 1) address = 3.248.176.9
;; Querying server (# 1) address = 3.248.176.9
;; Querying server (# 1) address = 3.248.176.9
;; res_query: send error
NO: errno=238, h_errno=2
datacom.com.au: Name server timeout
nickz@datacom.com.au... Transient parse error -- message queued for future delivery

Pump through your expert advise amo! i'm desperate!

Cheers
Nick

[Patrick Wallek]

It appears that your name server queries are timing out for some reason and it just can't resolve the address of datacom.com.au.

What happens if you just do a 'nsloookup datacom.com.au' from the command line?

Also have a look at the /var/adm/syslog/mail.log file and see what it says.

[Nick Zraika]

Thanks anyway..

I WON!

They admitted to an issue with the order in which names are resolved prior to being relayed. This was fixed on the DNS server, and what do you know? 1 weeks worth of emails starting pumping through!

Thanks.
Nick