sendmail 8.9.3 - SMTP - mail issues

[Vinod Subramanian]

I have checked my sendmail configuration (sendmail -v user@host.domain.com) and the sendmail.cf, aliases file and everything looks ok. I am getting notifications from this system through sendmail.

I am getting a mail message from mailer-daemon about a failed delivery repeatedly. I am not able to figure out what is causing this mail to be delivered repeatedly. Everything was working fine. I only change done was sendmail was restarted around 2 hrs prior to the getting the first mail from mailer-daemon.

I have alias set for mailer-daemon to Unix.Sysadmins@mydom.com

nslookup on test1.mydom.com returns the ip-address of the system. resolv.conf has the correct entry for the domain and ip address of nameservers. nsswitch.conf has dns entry followed by entry for files. I also tried putting files before dns with no change in result.

I have sent mail directly to both root@test1.mydom.com and Unix.Sysadmins@mydom.com and it gets delivered to the admin inbox. I also see the entries in /var/adm/syslog/mail.log when that happens, but for the mailed getting bounced I don't see any entries in the mail.log file.

Any help will be appreciated.


Error message in the mail from the mailer-daemon
----------------------------------



-----Original Message-----
From: Mail Delivery Subsystem [mailto:MAILER-DAEMON@test1.mydom.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2003 1:16 AM
To: root@test1.mydom.com
Subject: Returned mail: Data format error


The original message was received at Tue, 29 Jul 2003 01:16:03 -0400 (EDT)
from root@localhost

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
Unix.Sysadmins@mydom.com
(expanded from: root)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
>>> MAIL From: SIZE=382
<<< 553 5.1.8 ... Domain of sender address root@test1.mydom.com does not exist
501 Unix.Sysadmins@mydom.com... Data format error

[Balaji N]

does test1.mydom.com resolve on your mail server.

can u check if your mail server is able to resolve this address.

by default, if the sender doesnt have a dns entry the mails are rejected. this is to prevent spam.

-balaji

[Avinoam]

hello

it is hard to understand which server is the relay and wich server is the target
check the following :

1. check the file "/etc/mail/access" in your target server it should have a line that enables relay from the relay server
something like :

relay.server RELAY

2. check the "/etc/mail/mailertable" file on the relay server it should have a line that configure the smtp relay target like:

relay.mydomain.com smtp:[test1.mydomain.com]

3. check that the mx records are configured correctly.


hope this will help.. good luck

Avinoam