Sendmail won't deliver mail from this domain

[Brad Wright]

Hello. Our mail server is rejecting mail from msx.bg-group.com because it thinks the 'domain of sender address does not exist' (see excerpt from maillog below)-- can anyone help me with this? Is there a way to force sendmail to deliver this mail regardless of whether or not it can verify the sender's domain? Thanks for your help.

Jun 17 06:21:15 email sendmail[6989]: h5HDLDY06989: ruleset=check_mail, arg1=, relay=mail4.messagelabs.com [212.125.75.12], reject=501 5.1.8 ... Domain of sender address kb@msx.bg-group.com does not exist

[Steven E. Protter]

Your mail server is working fine.

It is rejecting mail from domain names that can not be resolved on the public internet.

See these lookup results:
[root@jerusalem sysconfig]# dig msx.bg-group.com

; <<>> DiG 9.2.1 <<>> msx.bg-group.com
;; global options: printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 21679
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;msx.bg-group.com. IN A

;; Query time: 342 msec
;; SERVER: 216.231.41.2#53(216.231.41.2)
;; WHEN: Tue Jun 17 12:41:12 2003
;; MSG SIZE rcvd: 34


No answer.

For your mail server to accept mail, you have two choices:

1) make the domain name resolve on the public internet. If you don't own it, contact the sender.

2) Turn off that directive in sendmail.cf or sendmail.mc

#2 is a REALLY, REALLY, REALLY BAD idea.

If you decide to do #2 it, buy some extra disk for the spammers to fill up.

SEP

[Brad Wright]

Thanks for your help. I'll contact the admin at bg-group.com to see if they can tell me why their mx record doesn't resolve.

[Steven E. Protter]

If this server resolves its own domain names, it needs to have direct access to the Internet.

It could be however that one of the DNS name servers isn't working properly.

I would in addition check /etc/resolv.conf

If the problem is intermittant, it could be interuptions of service at your Internet provider.

Regards and good Luck,

SEP
Lives for pats on the back(in the form of points).

:-)