sendmail Deferred: Connection refused
 

Running standard RH 8.0
Road Runner Cable modem.
The router is configured to forward all traffic to my dedicated ip address on the box.

Sendmail accepts connections locally but not from the internet.

I can ssh into the box.

When I run a test locally, all is well:
sendmail -v me@mydomain.com < /dev/null

When I run a test from another server over the internet, I get:
sendmail -v me@mydomain.com < /dev/null
Deferred: Connection refused by mail.mydomain.com.

I have done all I know to do.

I have also changed the iptables file in /etc/rc.d/init.d to iptables.original, thinking it would turn the it off after restart. If there is a better way to turn iptables off, let me know.

Please reply with any suggestions.
Thanks.

Is it listening on the correct port? I had a similar problem recently with courier-imap, I thought that having it listen on 127.0.0.1 was correct, in reality I wanted it listening on 0, i.e listen to everything.... Just a thought?

Thanks for the reply but I don't think that's the case.

[root@bounce root]# netstat -nl
Active Internet connections (only servers)
Proto Recv-Q Send-Q Local Address Foreign Address State
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:32768 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:110 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:111 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:6000 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:21 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 68.165.177.77:53 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 127.0.0.1:53 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:22 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN

Ok, that looks similar to mine, I don't use sendmail. I use qmail, with qmail you have to setup your rules to make sure that your machine can't be used as a relay, I would imagine that sendmail has something similar that blocks you from using this port to send email unless it's to a local host. Ypu'll have to dig around, I'm sure there's plenty of material out there.

Sorry I can't help more.

Hube

I re-installed RH 8 with no firewall.
Still having the same problems.

Port scan shows that port 25 is off:
There are no logs to speak of.
I checked /etc/services and smtp is not commented out.

So how can I open this port?

Thanks.

[root@ns1 root]# nmap -sT -O 68.165.177.77

Starting nmap V. 2.54BETA22 ( www.insecure.org/nmap/ )
Interesting ports on h-68-165-177-77.LSANCA54.covad.net (68.165.177.77):
(The 1536 ports scanned but not shown below are in state: closed)
Port State Service
22/tcp open ssh
53/tcp open domain
80/tcp open http
110/tcp open pop-3
443/tcp open https
445/tcp filtered microsoft-ds

I got it working.

Had to change sendmail.cf line.

From: O DaemonPortOptions=Port=smtp,Address=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA
to: O DaemonPortOptions=Port=smtp, Name=MTA

Thanks.