Question

Sendmail has trouble sendmail email with attachments?

Asked by: kwilliamsprint

Just upgraded from FreeBSD 5.4 to FreeBSD 7.2 and now when sending email with attachments to certain domains sendmail reports the following error:
Sep 22 18:08:31 firewall sm-mta[13927]: n8MNHB1A012205: SYSERR(root): timeout writing message to mail.inhs.org.: Broken pipe                                    

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Asked On
2009-09-22 at 19:34:10ID24753722
Tags

FreeBSD 7.2

Topics

FreeBSD

,

SendMail Email Server

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Answers

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-09-25 at 15:51:29ID: 25427932

Target domain rejects mail sent as root user. They are right for last 10-15 years or so.
Just rebuild your sendmail.cf with new sendmail and all will be fine.

 

by: kwilliamsprintPosted on 2009-09-29 at 20:21:37ID: 25455430

I have rebuilt from the /etc/mail directory using make and the following commands
                                                         
#m4 -D_CF_DIR_=/usr/share/sendmail/cf/ /usr/share/sendmail/cf/m4/cf.m4 firewall.a
utomatedaccounts.com.mc > firewall.automatedaccounts.com.cf                    
                                                                               
#cp sendmail.cf sendmail.cf-                                                    
#cp firewall.automatedaccounts.com.cf sendmail.cf              

contents of firewall.automatedaccounts.com.mc
                 
divert(0)                                                                      
VERSIONID(`$FreeBSD: src/etc/sendmail/freebsd.mc,v 1.29 2003/12/24 21:15:09 gsha
piro Exp $')                                                                    
OSTYPE(freebsd6)                                                                
DOMAIN(generic)                                                                
                                                                               
define(`confCONNECTION_RATE_WINDOW_SIZE',`60')dnl                              
define(`confCONNECTION_RATE_THROTTLE',`5')dnl                                  
                                                                               
define(`confCW_FILE', `-o /etc/mail/local-host-names')                          
                                                                               
define(`confBIND_OPTS', `WorkAroundBrokenAAAA')                                
define(`confNO_RCPT_ACTION', `add-to-undisclosed')                              
define(`confPRIVACY_FLAGS', `authwarnings,noexpn,novrfy')                      
                                                                               
FEATURE(access_db, `hash -o -T<TMPF> /etc/mail/access')                        
FEATURE(`delay_checks', `freind')dnl                                            
FEATURE(`ratecontrol', ,`terminate')dnl                                        
FEATURE(`conncontrol',,`terminate')dnl                                          
                                                                               
FEATURE(`greet_pause', `2000')dnl                                              
                                                                               
FEATURE(blacklist_recipients)                                                  
FEATURE(local_lmtp)      
divert(0)                                                                      
VERSIONID(`$FreeBSD: src/etc/sendmail/freebsd.mc,v 1.29 2003/12/24 21:15:09 gsha
piro Exp $')                                                                    
OSTYPE(freebsd6)                                                                
DOMAIN(generic)                                                                
                                                                               
define(`confCONNECTION_RATE_WINDOW_SIZE',`60')dnl                              
define(`confCONNECTION_RATE_THROTTLE',`5')dnl                                  
                                                                               
define(`confCW_FILE', `-o /etc/mail/local-host-names')                          
                                                                               
define(`confBIND_OPTS', `WorkAroundBrokenAAAA')                                
define(`confNO_RCPT_ACTION', `add-to-undisclosed')                              
define(`confPRIVACY_FLAGS', `authwarnings,noexpn,novrfy')                      
                                                                               
FEATURE(access_db, `hash -o -T<TMPF> /etc/mail/access')                        
FEATURE(`delay_checks', `freind')dnl                                            
FEATURE(`ratecontrol', ,`terminate')dnl                                        
FEATURE(`conncontrol',,`terminate')dnl                                          
                                                                               
FEATURE(`greet_pause', `2000')dnl                                              
                                                                               
FEATURE(blacklist_recipients)                                                  
FEATURE(local_lmtp)                                                            

Still getting messages from certain domains with broken pipe while trying to send email with attachments. I am able to send emails without attachments to these domains that are getting the errors?

                                                       

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-09-30 at 16:31:40ID: 25464693

Is Postfix,Qmail or Exim among options? they have better diagnostics in some areas and are less clumsy in normal operation.

 

by: kwilliamsprintPosted on 2009-09-30 at 19:54:06ID: 25465666

Not currently. Why would I want to change? Sendmail has been very, very reliable

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-10-01 at 02:19:38ID: 25467007

Broken pipe message means that socket got disconnected by something else. Others log at what stage it was disconnected.

 

by: kwilliamsprintPosted on 2009-10-05 at 21:40:04ID: 25501943

I did a tcpdump for the domain that has been getting the broken pipes and I am seeing numerous chksum errors when talking with there mail server. This only occurs when sending attachments to them
Here is a sample from the output of tcpdump
21:49:15.437459 IP (tos 0x0, ttl 64, id 20462, offset 0, flags [DF], proto TCP (
6), length 1420, bad cksum 0 (->3578)!) firewall.automatedaccounts.com.59311 > m
ail.inhs.org.smtp: ., cksum 0x6488 (correct), 1380:2760(1380) ack 1 win 65535  

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-10-06 at 02:21:30ID: 25503089

Is this tcpdump output an incoming packet or outgoing packet looking form your side?
If it is outgoing - it is fine - netcard processes IP checksums, for incoming - yours or theirs is broke. ifconfig -am to fix on your side.

It is best to have all the accelerated checksums and other IP exotics like sack or windowscale to be turned off (sysctl, /etc/sysctl.conf) on mail host - it does not need to have high performance, it needs hig accuracy and compatibility to send out mail to semi-brike hosts over the net.


 

by: kwilliamsprintPosted on 2009-10-09 at 20:22:55ID: 25540672

The packet is an outgoing. From what you are saying it looks like their email server is having issues with mine sending attachments. Does this sound reasonable?

 

by: gheistPosted on 2009-10-10 at 11:41:01ID: 25543285

sendmail has problems with 8-bit headers not encoded. Other mailers around do not have such problems for ages.
examine packet dump with wireshark to accept/deny this idea (tcpdump -i eth0 -w packet-dump.pcap -s 1600)

 

by: skullnobrainsPosted on 2010-10-28 at 07:44:35ID: 34011418

<quote>
I did a tcpdump for the domain that has been getting the broken pipes and I am seeing numerous chksum errors when talking with there mail server. This only occurs when sending attachments to them
</quote>

looks like a network problem to me.
i'd go for either a mismatch in MTA/MUA, or one of the equipment along the road is too saturated to do packet agregation properly

you probably can confirm this by sending large ping packets (above 2k) and check for packet loss

please send a wireshark trace (or another trace but wireshark is easier for everyone) so we can confirm this or find about another problem
possibly the default timeout in sendmail just changed and their server is long to answer
i believe the failure occurs while sending data, but we can't be sure

possibly as well the message itself contains a badly encoded attachment containing a \0, a single DOT on a line, or such stuff which messes the other server

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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