sendmail problem

[Christopher Little_2]

I'm trying to be able to e-mail to anything outside of my HP-UX 11.i box. The following is what I'm getting:

# echo hello|sendmail -v christopher.little@gx.novartis.com
christopher.little@gx.novartis.com... Connecting to nvchbs-s0137.is.chbs. via esmtp...
220 nvchbs-s0137.is.chbs ESMTP Sendmail for NT Build 101 8.9.3/NT-8.9.3; Wed, 15 Jan 2003 23:32:16 +0100
>>> EHLO usbrbwdd.gx.usbr
250-nvchbs-s0137.is.chbs Hello usbrbwdd.gx.usbr [162.86.161.87], pleased to meet you
250-EXPN
250-VERB
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE 10485760
250-DSN
250-ONEX
250-ETRN
250-XUSR
250 HELP
>>> MAIL From: SIZE=6
553 ... Unknown user root@usbrbwdd.gx.usbr
Data format error
/dead.letter... Saved message in /dead.letter
Closing connection to nvchbs-s0137.is.chbs.
>>> QUIT
221 nvchbs-s0137.is.chbs closing connection

I have no idea how this box is talking to nvchbs-s0137.is.chbs. It's not set up as a relay in sendmail.cf. I can't seem to find a reference to it anywhere. Any idea as to wehre else I should look for this system to be configured as a relay?

Chris

[Jeff Schussele · Accepted solution]

Hi Chris,

Couple of things:

1) Do you have any data in the DS field in sendmail.cf? Is it just an IP? If so what does it resolve to?

2) Do an nslookup type=mx for novartis.com - what does it return? Could be that nvchbs-s0137.is.chbs is the mail exchanger for novartis.com

Rgds,
Jeff

[Christopher Little_2]

Sure enough, nvchbs-s0137.is.chbs is the mail exchanger for novartis.com. Now I'm really confused. I suppose I should be talking to this box near the end of the whole mail process but why would it care who the message is coming from? I can send an e-mail to christopher.little@gx.novartis.com from any other mail source and I don't know that the exchanger from novartis.com has anyway of knowing if it's legitimate or not. Any help?

Chris

[Steven E. Protter]

The user id of the sender on the HP-UX box. Believe it or not there needs to be a valid user under some configurations.

Your system should be configured as a relay right under the DS entry in /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

example

DS
[192.168.0.40]

The relay server needs to know what to do when someone sends it mail. Most of them have to be configured by hostname or IP address to relay mail.

/sbin/init.d/sendmail stop
/sbin/init.d/sendmail start

I find this diagnosic command provide more information is.


...
/usr/sbin/sendmail -v -d8.99 -d38.99 stevenprotter@juf.org
mailq
after the fact lets you know if your mail actually got off your server.

Now, if you get connection refused, the relay server isn't relaying your mail.

Steve

[Jose Mosquera]

Hi,

Relay server is defined by DS option in /etc/mail/sendmail.cf, in your case:
DSnvchbs-s0137.is.chbs or any other alias that provide this resolution name. Realy server provide smtp service required to send mails out of your box domain(usbrbwdd.gx.usbr). By default every user in your box have a mail local service (username@usbrbwdd.gx.usbr). To send emails to other domain users you need at least a smtp server, in this case your box works like a "gateway" passing messages. Now for this your box needs a way to identify your domain name.

A possible way is forcing the definition of the domain inside the file /etc/mail/sendmail.cf by the definition of your "Official Domain Name" (Dj$w). i.e:
Djusbrbwdd.gx.usbr (blank spaces should not exist)

Keep present your /etc/nsswitch.conf and /etc/resolv.conf

Also remember reactivate sendmail service after **any change** in /etc/mail/sendmail.conf by:
#/sbin/init.d/./sendmail stop
#/sbin/init.d/./sendmail start


To chk queued mails execute "mailq -v", ths command will show you the content of /var/spool/mqueued directory where all non-successfully mail will be queued, each email have two files, one of the represent the header file and another is data file, you could remove them by rm command.

[Trever Furnish]

Um, do you see the same problem with other destinations? What makes you think it's not a problem on the remote exchanger? That system shouldn't be doing any username checking.