Haines Browsn

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I installed Debian lenny on a desktop machine with a wifi card and a D-Link AP/router. I'm using mutt, exim4, fetchmail, wifi-radar (network manager installed, but I configure by hand and ignore it because I don't know how to use it). Stock kernel is 2.6.26-2-686.

I can get news, browse the web, and receive email, but can't send mail.
All messages bounce with this error:

From: Mail Delivery System
<Mailer-Daemon@teufel.historicalmaterialism.info>
...
This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es)
failed:

<name>@<domain>
retry timeout exceeded

The problem probably connected with the fact that nothing gets written to the mail logs even though they are set up to be written.

Wifi-radar works to get me on line, but in its terminal these error lines show up:

eth1 Failed to read scan data : Resource temporarily unavailable

I don't know what I do, if anything, to cause this error line to be repeated (my trying to send an email message?, but at one point some showed up when I restarted networking.

I am using a new mail service, and that is about the only change to my configuration of exim4, which I've been using for years. The configuration option, hostname of outgoing smart host, I assume is the mail server I use, and they told me to put the port after my mail account: mail.historicalMaterialism.info::527. Before I used a different domain name, without port, on a different mail service, using ethernet.

The Netgear wifi card has two drivers: orinoco_pci and hostap_pci. I understand that loading two drivers should not be done, so I blacklisted the hostap_pci (only because I got the orinoco_pci to work first). This module uses an eth1 rather than wlan0 interface.

My /etc/network/interfaces file has the following. I'm very uncertain about this for wifi (not sure about allow-hot-plug, not sure of what lines needed for the wireless):

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# ethernet eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

# wireless eth1
allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
wireless-essid "Haines"
auto eth1

Another thing that puzzles me is my /etc/hosts file:

127.0.0.1 localhost
127.0.1.1 teufel.historicalMaterialism.info teufel
192.168.1.1 router

I always had this last line when using ethernet. But instead of the first two lines, I associated the names only with 127.0.0.1. What is this 127.0.1.0 network? Something new in Linux?

I can telnet localhost port 25, and when I telnet my AP/router, I can log in.

The problem seems local, so I include my routing table:

Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.1.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth1
default router 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth1

Haines Brown

Haines Browsn

E-mail messages sent out to any address are blocked by my own mail system:

> This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.
>
> A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
> recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
>
> gloriaVanderbilt@comcast.net
> retry timeout exceeded

I am using debian lenny, exim4, and mutt.

Since nothing is being written to the mail logs, I assume the problem arises before that operation comes up. What does this tell me about the location of the problem?

Messages sent to newsgroups with gnus get out, and I assume SMTP messages have access to port 25, but I'm not sure. What port does gnus use? Does the following indicate a problem?

> $ netstat -a | grep smtp
> tcp 0 0 *:smtp *:* LISTEN
> tcp6 0 0 [::]:smtp [::]:* LISTEN

This leaves exim configuration:

1. Mail sent by smarthost; received via fetchmail

2. Mailname: teufel.historicalMaterialism.info

3. IP addresses to listen on for incoming SMTP connections: ____

4. Other destinations for accepting mail: historical.materialism.info

5. Relay mail for: _____

6. IP address of mail server. I have a new server and this is the address
and port they told me to use. Although outgoing mail does not work,
the problem seems local rather than a rejection by the server:

mail.historicalMaterialism.info::527

7. the remaining configurations are irrelevant here.

Does this configuration look at all suspicious?

If none of the above identifies the location of the problem, what would be a reasonable troubleshooting procedure?

Haines Brown