Alright, I've been dealing with this one for a while and it seems to have stumped my local LUG too.

On a Slack 7.1 box, with an Earthlink PPPoe DSL connection with, yes, a static IP, I cannot get mail to go out. All the other services run as expected. The machine is running ipchains and acting as the house NAT as well, but using a rule-set that I've been recycling again and again without hastle. I've also been unable to send mail from a Redhat 7.0 box and a Mandrake 8.0 machine using the same connection. The only things all of these have ever had in common were the same (more or less) version of Sendmail, and The Roaring Penguin as their pppoe client.

Here's the following sendmail error:

----- Transcript of session follows -----
<XXXXX@cc.gatech.edu>... Deferred: Connection timed out with gatech.edu.
Message could not be delivered for 5 days
Message will be deleted from queue
Here's the ifconfig on ppp:


ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:66.47.111.xxx P-t-P:66.47.111.xxx Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1492 Metric:1
RX packets:13608 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:13390 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:10

Email just sits in the mailq for 5 days until dying. Mail makes it in just fine, go figure.

Does anyone know any quirks with either the Roaring Penguin, ppp, Earthlink, or Sendmail that I've missed?

Thanks in advance,

Finegan

this is more than likely a sendmail problem. sendmail is not able to resolve names and hence it queues. as far as mail coming in that usually is never a problem, because u'r static ip is resolved outside, as soon as mail is routed to u'r ip, smtp is open & accepts.

check u'r /etc/resolv.conf. also check u'r hostname settings. when u use raspppoe, don't say server assigned for the dns, manually set them in and they should be the same as u'r resolv.conf (also confirm that they r correct).

there could also be some firewall issues but i'd say it's more hostname etc....

there is a command to force mail out of the queue which escapes me, but try that command also and check messages.

hope this helps.