Sendmail ETRN between 2 mail servers

novis · 10-03-2006, 10:45 AM

Hi,

I want to make a backup mail server, and i am testing the posibilities to do the transfer between the second mail server and the main. These 2 servers are in the same network.

I use this comands:

telnet 192.168.1.2 (secondary) smtp
etrn 192.168.1.1 (primary)

and... it say:

250 2.0.0 Queuing for node 192.168.1.1 started

But... does nothing...

Any idea?

novis · 10-06-2006, 05:26 AM

No ideas?

Well, trying other posibilities, i found fetchmail, using webmin to configure it, make one user to test and wen i want to use it, returns me:

//.fetchmail.pid: Permission denied
fetchmail: lock creation failed.

Berhanie · 10-06-2006, 09:34 AM

Quote:

250 2.0.0 Queuing for node 192.168.10.1 started

It should say "Queuing for node 192.168.1.1", given the information you gave above. But let's assume it was a typo.
So, at this point the secondary server will try to make an SMTP connection to your primary. If something went wrong, it would be in the logs. Also, make sure you can "telnet 192.168.1.1 25" from the secondary.

novis · 10-07-2006, 01:46 AM

Yep, the ip is 192.168.1.1

I can make telnet smtp in both directions.

Where can i fins the logs?

Regards

Berhanie · 10-07-2006, 02:52 AM

Check /var/log/. You can also look in /etc/syslog.conf to see where mail goes.

novis · 10-09-2006, 02:46 AM

This is the log from the seconday mail server.

Oct 9 09:42:45 192.168.10.2 sendmail[23043]: k997gpUQ023043: [192.168.10.1]: ETRN 192.168.10.1

Berhanie · 10-09-2006, 05:24 AM

It's not complaining about the syntax (listing an ip address after ETRN). But, according to RFC 1985,

Quote:

The specified node name must be a fully qualified domain name for the
node, which may refer to a CNAME or MX pointer in the DNS. If an
alias is used for the node, multiple ETRN commands may be needed to
start the processing for the node as it may be listed at the remote
site under multiple names. This can also be addressed using the
options discussed in section 5.3.

So, try something like

Code:

ETRN domain.com

novis · 10-09-2006, 06:06 AM

The same. using "my-domain.com" does nothing...

Berhanie · 10-09-2006, 10:39 AM

Are you sure there is mail waiting in queue (see output of mailq)?

novis · 10-09-2006, 10:40 AM

using webmin, there's an addon that can see user's mailboxes and two users have mail at /var/spool/mail (sendmail)

Berhanie · 10-09-2006, 07:47 PM

Mail in users' mailboxes has already been delivered. It's not queued. ETRN released queued mail.

novis · 10-10-2006, 01:49 AM

And... how can i transfer the mails in mailboxes to another server in the same network? if this new server have mails too, and the same users?

Berhanie · 10-10-2006, 08:19 AM

Instead of scattering your mail in various computers, you can arrange for all mail to be delivered to a central IMAP server. Then, users can use an IMAP client, such as mutt or thunderbird, to read their mail by connecting to the server. It's clean, because all mail remains on the server.

novis · 10-11-2006, 08:43 AM

Thanks a lot Berhanie for your time and help.

Finally found the solution with fetchmail, the problem was that (i don't know how...) the users /home have others owners.

For exemple, the user Roger, have the owner Paul:Paul
And the user Paul have the owner Ana:Ana

Changing this have the solution.

Thanks
best regards!

Berhanie · 10-11-2006, 10:19 AM

You're welcome, novis. I'm happy to hear that you solved your problem.