Re: fetchmail and smtp problem

[Ray Olszewski <ray@comarre.com>]

The failed messages you report on indicate a basic misunderstanding about 
what the parts of an e-mail address do. The basic structure of a modern 
e-mail address is: userid@hostname.domainname.

Both localhost and localhost.localdomain are candidatef for appearing to 
the right of the @ sign, as alternatives to (in your case) hartford-hwp.com 
. From the failures, it appears that you are trying to use them to the left 
of the @ sign, as a substitute for brownh . Attempts to do this, quite 
properly, fail. The userid postion of the address needs to be either a 
valid account on the system (e.g., brownh or root) or an alias listed in 
your /etc/aliases file (e.g., postmaster).

So, based solely on these tests, there is NO evidence that sendmail is 
misconfigured. Bad addresses do bounce, and you do seem to get the 
bounces.  There might be a configuration problem in rmail (an MUA I am 
unfamiliar with) that causes the bcc attempts to fail, or there may be 
something else causing that problem (in fetchmail, sendmail, or the ISP's 
smtp server) ... but nothing you report below helps to sort that one out.

I can't figure out what you are talking about with respect to item #2 in 
your list of messages.

Finally, in an earlier message you expressed some bewilderment about the 
term "outbox". This not a compact version of a traditional rural waste 
disposal system, as your facetious comments seemed to assume, but a place 
where your MUA stores copies of e-mail messages you have sent. All the MUAs 
I am familiar with keep them, but as I've said, I am not familiar with 
rmail. You should see if rmail maintains a maibox called out, or outbox, or 
sent-messages, or some other plausible synonym; if it does, you could then 
let us *see* the problem messages (at least the headers) rather than just 
telling us what you remember, or what you think is important, about them.

At 05:14 PM 12/12/02 -0500, Haines Brown wrote:
>I defined the To: field in ~/.fetchmailrc. Here's what I'm using now
>for testing
>
>   set logfile /opt/tmp/fetchmail_dec12.log
>   poll pop.registeredsite.com
>   proto POP3
>   user brownh@hartford-hwp.com
>   password XXXX
>
>   keep
>   smtpname brownh@hartford-hwp.com
>
>I now see that I did in fact have emacs set up (setq mail-self-blind
>t) all along. For some reason, the blind copies did not show up until
>after I had rebooted the HD. But with this new boot, rmail sees them.
>
>I found /var/spool/brownh. Here's what's in it (as I later discovered,
>of course, rmail can easily read it).
>
>====================== the failed messages ==========================
>
>1. A message rom Mail Delivery Subsystem
><MAILER-DAEMON@hartford-hwp.com> sent earlier today (when I booted the
>present HD? I've not run any mail applications nor gone on line since
>yesterday with this HD). The mail deliver subsystem reports that the
>address of my message of the day before had a fatal error. Indeed user
>localhost@hartford-hwp.com is unknown. But This is a message I sent to
>"localhost," and that may simply be impossible.
>
>Here's the critical part:
>
>
>    ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
>localhost
>     (reason: 550 5.1.1 <localhost@hartford-hwp.com>... User unknown)
>     (expanded from: localhost)
>
>    ----- Transcript of session follows -----
>... while talking to hartford-hwp.com.:
> >>> DATA
><<< 550 5.1.1 <localhost@hartford-hwp.com>... User unknown
>550 5.1.1 localhost... User unknown
>
>--gBCJn2fL000871.1039722543/hartford-hwp.com
>Content-Type: message/delivery-status
>
>Reporting-MTA: dns; hartford-hwp.com
>Arrival-Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 18:09:16 -0500
>
>Final-Recipient: RFC822; localhost@hartford-hwp.com
>Action: failed
>Status: 5.1.1
>Remote-MTA: DNS; hartford-hwp.com
>Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 5.1.1 <localhost@hartford-hwp.com>... User unknown
>Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 14:49:03 -0500
>
>--gBCJn2fL000871.1039722543/hartford-hwp.com
>Content-Type: message/rfc822
>
>Return-Path: <brownh>
>Received: (from brownh@localhost)
>         by hartford-hwp.com (8.12.5/8.12.5/Submit) id gBBN9Gnd002694;
>         Wed, 11 Dec 2002 18:09:16 -0500
>Date: Wed, 11 Dec 2002 18:09:16 -0500
>Message-Id: <200212112309.gBBN9Gnd002694@hartford-hwp.com>
>From: Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com>
>To: localhost
>Subject: test RH8.0 to localhost dec11 1800
>Reply-to: brownh@hartford-hwp.com
>
>
>2. Also in queue is a message sent to a valid address, which is a mail
>fowarding server. The message was not fowarded back to me because the
>target name server timed out. This was not a fatal error. I've not
>known that I've had trouble with that server. It won't try again until
>the 16th.
>
>The header of this message looks ok, except that Return-Path is not a
>valid address:
>
>Return-Path: <brownh>
>From: Haines Brown <brownh@hartford-hwp.com>
>To: kb1grm@arrl.net
>
>Reply-to: brownh@hartford-hwp.com
>
>
>3.  A failed message sent to localhost.localdomain. I don't know that
>I'd expect such an address to work, especially since it came out as
>localhost.localdomain@hartford-hwp.com.
>
>Would you agree that fetchmail or sendmail is misconfigured? Despite
>the provision for blind copy in the mails, I get nothing back right
>away. I captured copies of the queue files in case there may be
>further useful into in them.
>
>=========================================================================
>
>I compared /etc/aliases, and found that my alias file lacks:
>
>mailer-daemon:  postmaster
>postmaster:     root
>
>But supplies a range of new aliases such as:
>
>sshd:           root
>smmsp:          root
>mailman:        root
>postfix:        root
>netdump:        root
>ldap:           root
>
>I caputred the /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file, but it's too big and
>complicated for ready analysis. There's a lot different from my old
>sendmail.cf, but I wouldn't know how to analyse those differences.
>
>I rechecked /ect/hosts:
>
>   127.0.0.1   hartford-hwp.com   localhost.localdomain   localhost
>
>this seems ok


--
-------------------------------------------"Never tell me the odds!"--------
Ray Olszewski					-- Han Solo
Palo Alto, California, USA			  ray@comarre.com
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs