Sendmail does not deliver when email comes from an external server

When you send an email to problemserver.com it doesn't make an smtp connection to problemserver.com, it looks up the MX records for problemserver.com and sends the mail there.  So check your MX records... assuming a top-level domain as in your example.

okay here's an example of one of the zone files:

;
; Zone file for toptipper.com
;
$TTL 3D
@       IN      SOA     ns0.kirkyonline.com. webmaster.toptipper.com. (
                        2008020103
                        8H
                        2H
                        4W
                        1D )
;
                NS      ns0.kirkyonline.com. ; Inet Address of name server
                NS      ns1.kirkyonline.com. ; Inet Address of name server
                MX      10 mail.toptipper.com. ; Primary Mail Exchanger
;
;toptipper.com. IN TXT "v=spf1 ip4:207.228.252.8 ip4:207.228.252.47 ip4:207.228.252.194 ip4:66.36.238.10 ip4:66.36.238.69 include:iinet.net.au include:bigpond.com ~all"
localhost       A       207.228.252.47
ns0             A       207.228.252.47
ns1             A       207.228.252.194
www             A       207.228.252.47
mail            A       207.228.252.47

Does that give you any more info?

regards

If it helps, here's my named.conf file.  I think the only changes I was making was with the "recursion yes;" which I think might be back to the way they were when the configuration was working (yes i've restarted named and yes i know i should have backed up the file before making changes)

[root@kirkyonline danielk]# cat /etc/named.conf

//
// named.caching-nameserver.conf
//
// Provided by Red Hat caching-nameserver package to configure the
// ISC BIND named(8) DNS server as a caching only nameserver
// (as a localhost DNS resolver only).
//
// See /usr/share/doc/bind*/sample/ for example named configuration files.
//
// DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE - use system-config-bind or an editor
// to create named.conf - edits to this file will be lost on
// caching-nameserver package upgrade.
//
options {
        listen-on port 53 { 127.0.0.1; };
        listen-on-v6 port 53 { ::1; };
        directory       "/var/named";
        dump-file       "/var/named/data/cache_dump.db";
        statistics-file "/var/named/data/named_stats.txt";
        memstatistics-file "/var/named/data/named_mem_stats.txt";
        recursion yes;
        query-source    port 53;
        query-source-v6 port 53;
        allow-query     { localhost; };
};
logging {
        channel default_debug {
                file "data/named.run";
                severity dynamic;
        };
};
view localhost_resolver {
        match-clients      { localhost; };
        match-destinations { localhost; };
        recursion yes;
        include "/etc/named.rfc1912.zones";
};

ok, so when  you send mail to you@toptipper.com it will make the connection to mail.toptipper.com (207.228.252.47).  From your machine see if you can "telnet mail.toptipper.com smtp".  It should open up a connection, and you could say "ehlo test" and it'll say hi back.  If not, you've got a firewall in the way or sendmail isn't listening on the right interface.

Try that and we'll take it from there.

BTW, I hope that wasn't your whole named.conf... because you domains aren't in there (it never loads your toptipper.com zone file).

no i can't telnet to mail.toptipper.com smtp from anywhere - even from the same server (where I can send mail via the mail command as shown above) I get a connection refused message.  I've got a feeling we're going off the beaten track here, I think the server is configured not to allow any form of telnet and there have been no changes to the firewall recently so its unlikely this is the source of the problem (but of course I could be wrong).  

named.conf includes  /etc/named.rfc1912.zones....

here are some commands i've run:

[root@kirkyonline mqueue]# pgrep -fl sendmail
8669 sendmail: Queue runner@01:00:00 for /var/spool/clientmqueue
8693 sendmail: accepting connections
8694 sendmail: ./m111axX4031904 couldletter.com.: user open

[root@kirkyonline mqueue]# netstat -nlp|grep sendmail
tcp        0      0 127.0.0.1:25                0.0.0.0:*                   LISTEN      8693/sendmail: acce

[root@kirkyonline mqueue]# /etc/init.d/iptables stop
Flushing firewall rules:                                   [  OK  ]
Setting chains to policy ACCEPT: filter                    [  OK  ]
Unloading iptables modules:                                [  OK  ]


[danielk@toptipper-new ~]$ telnet mail.toptipper.com smtp
Trying 207.228.252.47...
telnet: connect to address 207.228.252.47: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused
[danielk@toptipper-new ~]$ echo hello | mail editor@sportspunter.com

mail is not delivered, and nothing shows in sendmail log on mail server
(that's from another server)

[root@kirkyonline mqueue]# telnet mail.toptipper.com smtp
Trying 207.228.252.47...
telnet: connect to address 207.228.252.47: Connection refused
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection refused

[root@kirkyonline mqueue]# echo hello | mail editor@toptipper.com
The email gets through
(thats' from the same server sendmail is running on)

The mail log shows:
Feb  1 05:51:33 kirkyonline sendmail[9080]: m115pXdI009080: from=root, size=32, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<200802010551.m115pXdI009080@kirkyonline.kirkyonline.com>, relay=root@localhost
Feb  1 05:51:33 kirkyonline sendmail[9081]: m115pX6F009081: from=<root@kirkyonline.kirkyonline.com>, size=344, class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<200802010551.m115pXdI009080@kirkyonline.kirkyonline.com>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=localhost.localdomain [127.0.0.1]
Feb  1 05:51:33 kirkyonline sendmail[9080]: m115pXdI009080: to=editor@toptipper.com, ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay, pri=30032, relay=[127.0.0.1] [127.0.0.1], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (m115pX6F009081 Message accepted for delivery)
Feb  1 05:51:36 kirkyonline sendmail[9082]: m115pX6F009081: to=dkirk@iinet.net.au, ctladdr=<root@kirkyonline.kirkyonline.com> (0/0), delay=00:00:03, xdelay=00:00:03, mailer=esmtp, pri=30585, relay=as-av.iinet.net.au. [203.0.178.180], dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent (ok:  Message 275706519 accepted)

perhaps i shoudl have read your comment from the bottom up.

I removed DaemonPortOptions to not have "Addr=127.0.0.1"

and it is working again

Can you just explain what that command does and why it now works?

thanks

Sure.  In the old releases of RedHat sendmail was installed and, by default, listened on all addresses.  This mean that a new system was potentially a spam relay.  To help resolve that issue by default sendmail only listens for connections on its loopback interface, so you can only use sendmail from the local machine.

The Addr= line in the DaemonPortOptions tells sendmail to only listen on a given address.  127.0.0.1 is the ip on the loopback interface - it is a reserved IP on all systems, and is only used to connect to yourself - it isn't routable.

The DamonPortOptions contains any number of options to onfnigure the daemon... if you had many interfaces on your machine (one IP on a vlan, one on some public network, one on some private, etc...) you could specify which ones to use, or you could specify an alternate port, etc...

Glad it works now!!!

I think that the question is solved - I posed the last comment as a clarification, but the last comment by the poster was that the issue was solved.

Forced accept.
modus_operandi
EE Moderator

i don't get it, i clicked on 'this is the solution' and awarded points for a previous post.  It's a bit silly to have to do it again just because we have a little post-solution discussion?

I've just checked my email and it looks like I got given the points.  I'm sure it asked me who should get them and I selected arrkerr!?!?