Stumped with Postfix- SMTP dead
 

Hi all.

Well.. 2-days later, I guess it’s finally time to ask for help. Here’s where I’m at:

I did a fresh install of 7.3, and at the same time, decided to replace sendmail with postfix. After the install, I deleted sendmail through webmin and setup postfix. It complained about my static IP not being in the inet interface, so I fixed that. First thing I did was try to send a message through a webmin user mailbox, and this worked. It probably would through pine too.

However…

When I try to send, (relay I guess) through netscape or outlook, nothing! The connection just hangs and then times out with a “server not responding” message. I’ve never seen anything so bizarre, as in, no useful error messages or anything. Here’s what I can tell you for sure:

- I altered the original main.cf configuration, but then reverted back to its default settings.
- My ISP does not block port 25
- My Linksys router has port 25 open
- I can ping mail.mydomain.com
- There’s nothing with respects to an SMTP attempt in the mail logs- just pop3 logins
- Everything worked fine with Sendmail
- I’m not relaying through an ISP mail server- I should be able to send mail directly, or at least within my LAN

While my connection to port 25 is hanging, running iptraf shows that it’s trying to connect. I mean… If I “was” making it as far as Postfix, wouldn’t I be receiving some sort of Postfix error message, as opposed to a mere connection timeout message? I don’t even think it’s making it as far as postfix.

Any insight or direction would be very much appreciated at this point. It’s been a long past two days.

Thanks,

Dave H

Just incase anyone’s interested, here’s a netstat – nlp

Active Internet connections (only servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State PID/Program name
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32768 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 628/rpc.statd
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:10030 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 6715/perl
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:110 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2932/xinetd
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:143 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2932/xinetd
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 600/portmap
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:80 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 4523/httpd
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:21 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 2932/xinetd
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 795/sshd
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 6378/master
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:443 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 4523/httpd
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:32768 0.0.0.0:* 628/rpc.statd
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:10000 0.0.0.0:* 6715/perl
udp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* 600/portmap
Active UNIX domain sockets (only servers)
Proto RefCnt Flags Type State I-Node PID/Program name Path
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 1634 929/gpm /dev/gpmctl
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 1733 1017/xfs /tmp/.font-unix/fs7100
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20234 6378/master public/cleanup
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20253 6378/master public/flush
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20261 6378/master public/showq
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20241 6378/master private/rewrite
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20245 6378/master private/bounce
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20249 6378/master private/defer
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20257 6378/master private/smtp
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20265 6378/master private/error
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20269 6378/master private/local
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20273 6378/master private/virtual
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20277 6378/master private/lmtp
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20281 6378/master private/cyrus
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20285 6378/master private/uucp
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20289 6378/master private/ifmail
unix 2 [ ACC ] STREAM LISTENING 20293 6378/master private/bsmtp

Your postfix only listens to the localhost, is that what you want?

I noticed that, but have absolutely no idea of how it ended up that way, or how to change it. From all the reading I’ve done, Postfix, (at least in its vanilla state) should be able to function with a few changes to the defaults, but I wasn’t so lucky.

So no, I don’t want its listening limited to the local host, but I don’t know how to change it. Is this a default thing it does upon install? Any magic fixes would be welcome:)

Thanks again,

Dave H

inet_interfaces =
all
mynetworks =
192.168.0.0/24,
192.168.1.0/24,
127.0.0.0/8

Thanks David.

After several days of messing around with no luck, I wimped out and put sendmail back on the system. I was running out of time, and the barrage of anomalies that continued to emerge were beginning to take their toll on my patience. Appreciate the responses just the same.

David H

That's cool sendmail is a good choice. I use postfix on my home server, but I use sendmail on my laptop.