sendmail problem
 

This is the log of my mail server.
When I use the account user2 of domain.com to send an e-mail to user1 of sinagirl.com. Most the case I can't send to the account of sinagirl.com. The mail is queue at /var/spool/mqueue for a long long time and can't send out and server send back email to user2 to say that email can't send out and will retry in serveal hours. However, I can luckily sent out in some time
may be 1 out of 10 times.

Is that the problem of my server or server of sinagirl or the connection between us?

Welcome to the forum! It's hard to say why your servers aren't playing well together. I myself am dealing with issues right now. I've been administering sendmail servers for about 3 years (with minimal problems), now all of a sudden I'm timing out with two other servers. There are some things to look for before we get too deep. #1 - Have you sent mail successfully to the recipient before from your server? #2 - Is your server listed on any of the spam blacklists? This may not be the intention of your server, but if it ever got compromised, it may be listed. Go to http://www.dnsstuff.com and enter the server's IP address in and you can find out. If it is, there are ways to get it removed. #3 - Is the other server using SPF technology? This is something new (at least to me) and this is what I am trying to get set up on mine right now to see if this would stop the timeouts. Go to http://www.spf.pobox.com/certification.html to find out more.

So, if you have sent successfully before, and your server hasn't been compromised, then there are probably these external issues that can cause your problems. Some of the basic checks though are to insure that all of your settings in sendmail are at the defaults levels (like timeouts, etc.). If you have tweaked down the timers, try opening them back up. So on....

Look at these things and repost!

It is sucessful to send out before
no config has been changed.
And there is something very strange.
For example, two people in my company send to user1@sinagirl.com. One can send success and another can queue for a long time without success.
From now, no edit of config has been izzued. However, a new antivirus(symantec cor 10.X) has been installed. Will it affect the client's e-mail since the e-mail will scan before sending out

There is a way to discern if it is the mail server or the client. At the mail server, log in as the two different users and send mail from there. If both are successful from the mail server, then it would definitely be at the individual clients. I have seen configuration issues with Norton before. If it ends up being the client side, trying turning Norton off and then resending. You will probably just have to go through a trial and eliminate sequence to isolate it. Try that and repost.

Yeah I am having some strange problems with sendmail. Get this. My email client can connect to my server, send, and receive no problem between accounts when using the client, but when I try to actually log into the email server and send something from root, or another user while at the command line (i.e. a file -- mail username < dir/to/file) , nothing happens, I dont get any error message, but I dont get any email at all.

I can recall changing somethign in the server settings to the effect that required changing the interface that sendmail listens to from 127.0.0.7 to an internal interface, but I am not sure how to fix this problem.

You should have sendmail configured to listen to ports 127.0.0.1 & the IP address of the interface that it uses to connect to the world. 127.0.0.1 is the local interface and will be where mail comes from when using the command line. Make those adjustments in your sendmail.mc file, rebuild sendmail and then check it out.

Yeah you know what? thats how I thought I had it set up, or... so I thought. Its pretty amazing how its best to leave something alone for a while when you get a bit annoyed, you miss the the simplest little error. Here it is:

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=10.0.0.1, Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl

at the end of 10.0.0.1 I had a (.) i.e. 10.0.0.1. and didnt realize it so it was throwing the configuration off. I got it set up for internal clients only.


It seems to be working now.


Thanks for your help.


Anthony

You're quite welcome. That's what this forum is all about. Just keep a watch on the forum and watch for someone that you can help. That's what we do.

[[[At the mail server, log in as the two different users and send mail from there.]]]

success.

[[[turning Norton off and then resending]]]
not all the time success.

By the way, I found something in sendmail.org which quite similar to my case, I've
always get error-reply: read error from host.name" errors?Then, I use an ethereal to cap the packet. I find that always have checksum error on mailing. will it be problems. Sorry for the stupid, since I am really newbie to linux

Q3.10 -- How do I solve "collect: I/O error on connection" or "reply: read error from host.name" errors?
Date: April 8, 1997
Updated: May 9, 2000
Updated: June 8, 2002
Updated: March 2, 2003
If you are just getting occasional such messages, they're probably due to a temporary network problem, or the remote host crashing or otherwise abruptly terminating the connection. If you are getting a lot of these from a single host, there is probably some incompatibility between 8.x and that host (see Q3.12 and Q3.20). If you get a lot of them in general, you may have network problems that are causing connections to get reset.

Note that this problem is sometimes caused by incompatible values of the MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) size on a SLIP or PPP connection. Be sure that your MTU size is configured to be the same value as what your ISP has configured for your connection. If you are still having problems, then have your ISP configure your MTU size for 1500 (the maximum value), and you configure your MTU size similarly.

Another possibility is that you have a router/firewall filtering out all incoming ICMP messages, while your OS is doing "Path MTU discovery" (e.g. modern TCP/IP stacks do this by default). Path MTU discovery relies on certain ICMP messages being allowed through back to the host originating the traffic - see our tip on Path MTU Discovery and RFC 1191 for the details.

Lastly, here is part of a post from comp.mail.sendmail about a SCO 7.1.0 specific bug which may produce similar problems.

Subject: Re: Recipient mail server times out sendmail connection
Date: 5 Jun 2002 21:37:02 -0700
From: maillist@screamingplants.com (ike)
I ran a packet sniffer on mail traffic that was causing problems and found that the tcp checksums for large packets were all off by 14. I found out later that there is a network bug in the OS (SCO 7.1.0). After applying a few patches, the problem appears to have been resolved.

TLS missing certificate: error:0200100D:system
> library:fopen:Permission denied (#4.3.0)
I have recently receive this error
Is that related to my server of some certificate problem

I would suspect that it is in fact due to your STARTTLS certificates. Just a guess though. There is a small blurb on building your certificates in your sendmail.mc file and I am sure that if you look at sendmail's site, they can walk you through it (http://www.sendmail.org/m4/starttls.html). Just make sure that when you re-build your certificates, you point sendmail.mc to the correct location. Give that a shot and repost.