asked on

SCO and mail

I am an ISP and using sco openserver 5.0.4. We have recently changed our IP addresses (all the systems have been changed). Everytime someone sends an email to one of our email users, the mail deamon returns and email back to the sendor saying:

=======================================================

The original message was received at Tue, 5 Jan 1999 17:42:25 -0500(EST)
from send105.yahoomail.com [205.180.60.128]
- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors --
<usrtest@mydomain.net> - Transcript of session follows ---
lmail: Cannot stat /usr/internet/ip/219.83.145.5/sco_mail/passwd: No
such file or directory
554 <usrtest@mydomain.net>... System file missing: Error 0

--------------------------------------------------------
Attachment: Message/delivery-status

Reporting-MTA: dns; f1engine.mydomain.net
Received-From-MTA: dns; send105.yahoomail.com
Arrival-Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 17:42:25 -0500 (EST)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; usrtest@f1engine.mydomain.net
Action: failed
Status: 5.5.0
Last-Attempt-Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 17:42:32 -0500 (EST)

--------------------------------------------------------

Attachment: Forwarded Message

Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 14:43:33 -0800 (PST)
From: Patty<patty@yahoo.com>
Subject: test.......
To: usrtest@mydomain.net

test..........
=======================================================the directory
/usr/internet/ip/219.83.145.5 (this is the old ip address) does NOT exist but the new one which is
/usr/internet/ip/209.123.123.7 exists

is there somewhere that says or still uses the old ip address? if yes, is it the configuration files ? where are they and how can i fix them to reflect the new ip addresse?

AnitaP

ASKER

ps. these are not the real ip values.

ahoffmann

Sounds that DNS's MX record still points to the old IP, instead of the new

AnitaP

ASKER

My problem is fixed. Thanks. Just have a small clarification,
ahoffmann : On my Primary DNS system (where all the IP's are assigned) I had only one MX record which was my own domain
MyDomain.net MX 10 www.MyDomain.net

But then (after technical support) we added another MX record which pointed out to our ISP provider. Could this been the error?

By the way, what exactly is the MX record for?

ahoffmann

MX - Mail Exchanger
it's the FQDN for the machine responsible for receiving mails

If you add a 2'nd MX record, then sendmail tries this if the 1'st fails to connect, if the 2'nd fails too an error is returned.
(NOTE that this happens on the site which tries to sent mail to you).

AnitaP

ASKER

So, does this mean that if I take out the secondary MX record (my own internet provider) that my mail won't work ? And how do I know which one am I currently using ? since it does not return any errors after I added the secondary MX record?

ahoffmann

"Which one will be used" depends on the number right after the MX keyword, high number = high order, all others are fallback entries.

> .. that my mail won't work?
not really, depends on how your MTA is setup; for example sendmail can be used without DNS, or it may use a smart-relay host.

AnitaP

ASKER

What if the first MX record(which is my domains email) is set to 10 and the secondary MX record (my own Internet providers) is set to 20? which is currently running? the secondary one? MX=20?

ahoffmann

man named:
.
MX a mail exchanger (domain), preceded by a prefer-
ence value (0..32767), with lower numeric values
representing higher logical preferences.

.

the one with the lowest number will always be prefered, there others only if the 1'st is not reachable.

AnitaP

ASKER

Thank you very much. That really helped ! Do you want the points? I'd be glad to give them to you.

ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION

ahoffmann

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AnitaP

ASKER

Thank you. Would you be willing to help me also with my unix ftp problem? please check the unix section.

ahoffmann

.. still left some comments ;-)