Sendmail 550 access denied

vous · 03-03-2005, 07:05 AM

Hello All,

I just installed sendmail on a Mandrake 10.1.

I started it up and tried to send a message via command line and this is what happend:

[root@XXXX]# telnet localhost 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to XXXXX.com (127.0.0.1).
Escape character is '^]'.
220 XXXXX.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.13.1/8.13.1; Thu, 3 Mar 2005 13:57:40 +0100
MAIL FROM:<root@XXXXX.com>
550 5.0.0 Access denied

I thought it could have something to do with root but I tried with other users and get the same message back.

What could be the problem?

vous · 03-03-2005, 08:06 AM

Perhaps this can help...

I sent email via an external client and got this back:

Final-Recipient: rfc822; root@XXXXXX.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; mail for XXXXXX.com loops back to myself

vous · 03-03-2005, 08:42 AM

Apparently the error message is specificly related to:

"550 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable"

I have checked by typing:

[root@XXXXX]# mail
No mail for root

So I assume he has a mail box (and I have checked it too with other users), otherwise I would have had another type of error message.

What I haven't been able to figure out is where the mail boxes of the users reside. I checked in their home dirs but found nothing.

Is this going in the right direction?

Any thougts on why I get the 550 denied even when its the same user trying to access his own mail box?

vous · 03-03-2005, 09:36 AM

I found a GREAT fix for ALL sendmail problems!!!

Procedure:

1) Uninstall Sendmail

2) Install Postfix

It works like a charm!

Brian Knoblauch · 03-03-2005, 09:36 AM

Looks like some possible DNS/sendmail local-host-name configuration issues. Hard to say for sure. You need to review the entire sendmail configuration to make sure it's proper. Mail (I believe) goes to /var/spool/mail on Linux.

vous · 03-03-2005, 09:56 AM

Hi Brian,

thanks for the input, but that was exactly what threw me off from sendmail....I would have to dedicate myself for countless hours going through config files and docs; I understand that there are many who find that amusing, I on the other hand like: clear and to the point instructions. It's a shame that there is no such thing with sendmail, or I just didn't find it.

Anyways, I don't know if you are installing a mail server as well, but if you want a tip, go with postfix. I spent 4 hours decrypting the "user friendly" docs of sendmail and got nowhere with it; I got postfix to (at least) mail internally (from scratch) in 25 minutes!

Cheers!

Brian Knoblauch · 03-03-2005, 10:11 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by vous
Hi Brian,

thanks for the input, but that was exactly what threw me off from sendmail....I would have to dedicate myself for countless hours going through config files and docs; I understand that there are many who find that amusing, I on the other hand like: clear and to the point instructions. It's a shame that there is no such thing with sendmail, or I just didn't find it.

Anyways, I don't know if you are installing a mail server as well, but if you want a tip, go with postfix. I spent 4 hours decrypting the "user friendly" docs of sendmail and got nowhere with it; I got postfix to (at least) mail internally (from scratch) in 25 minutes!

Cheers!

I run sendmail, postfix, and Exchange mail servers on various platforms :-) Exchange is a big headache all the way around (but is best choice for linking with Outlook/PDA's). Postfix is easiest to get up and running initially, but is harder to do more complex configurations with (best choice for smaller number of domains). Sendmail has a harder initial install, but once done, everything else is easier to manage (scales better).