Hello,

I have set up a machine to run bugzilla on. All is well and good except that bugzilla won't send e-mails out.

So i did a and got the following output (slightly edited to hide host names):
That is where the log indicates it goes wrong, it then indicates that a failure message was sent back to bugzilla-admin-daemon@bugzilla.fakedomain but the user was unknown.

From the little information I have found, this is caused because some relay thinks I am a spammer because I do not have a proper host name or am not in the DNS lookup table.

the entries I have on my 'bugzilla' machine are:
(#'s are to keep the address private (though it is internal so I don't know why I'm so paranoid, but the address is correct)

My bugzilla machine was not listed in the local servers DNS table (an nslookup revealed this) so I added it manually (supplying the name bugzilla, to which it appended ".fakedomain.local".
Now an "nslookup bugzilla.fakedomain.local" works if my local server is the primary DNS. but none of the aliases work (though they can all be pinged).

So do you think the problem is that other DNS are thinking my bugzilla machine is a spammer and thus rejecting the mail? Can anyone suggest something I can do to solve this?

P.S. I can surf the internet, I have samba shares etc so the network is generally fine.

Thanks in advance.

---EDIT---

Further investigation shows that the e-mails bugzilla sends out are sent from "bugzilla-admin-daemon@bugzilla", and the return mail complains (quite rightly) that 'bugzilla' is not a qualified domain name. However /etc/hosts does not have a 'bugzilla' entry, it does have a 'bugzilla.fakedomain' and 'bugzilla.fakedomain.local'.
In ubuntu's network configuration app I have set the host to 'bugzilla.fakedomain' and the domain to fakedomain. etc etc.

So my question is where is it getting this address from?

To send email, you need to have a real domain name, with a real IP address. 192.168 is a non-routing address. It can't send or receive email from the public internet. Your /etc/hosts file is local only to the machine in question. You can call your box anything you want, but that doesn't make it the machines name to the internet. That is similar to a nickname. All of your friends (the LAN) may know you as Skip, but to the world, you're name is not Skip.

So long story short, you need to own a real world domain, and create a MX record, which points to the real world IP of the mail server. Just because your local fake domain knows this is a mail server doesn't allow the world to know it in any way.

The address you are sending out as is usually configured in the MTA, so you should check the configuration you have on sendmail.

Peace,
JimBass

Thanks for your help.

I am certainly aware of the whole Internal vs external addressing concept, but what confuses me is where sendmail is getting it's choice of domain name from, since it's not set to that anywhere.

I have been looking at sendmail's configuration files for a while, but this is my first time with sendmail and it seems quite cryptic.

I know what my FQDN (fully qualified domain name is) just need to tell sendmail to use it.

Thanks for your help anyway, guess I'll plod on...

A quick google shows that there is a program named sendmailconfig that allows you to set the FQDN for sendmail. I suggest trying that.

Peace,
JimBass

Ahh JimBass, sendmailconfig makes everything a lot easier.

I think I have solved my problem now (it was in actual fact a problem with /etc/hosts entries), but that sendmailconfig tool is going to come in handy.

Thank you very much for your assistance.

No problem man, glad I could help.

Peace,
JimBass