Mailing List Archive

On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Thom Howard wrote:

> I've just recently switched our mail server to Qmail and am loving it so
> far. However, we recently ran into the problem with sendmail.cf on a
> Solaris 2.4 machine (our web server) that prevented it from sending to our
> mail server. We were able to get this fixed, but what concerns me about
> this is that there was no notification on the sender's side that there was
> a problem, it simply queued the mail.
>
> I'm now wondering how common this problem is, and if there is anything I
> can do on my side to prevent qmail from rejecting these messages. While
> this might technically be sendmail's fault, I can't assume that all the
> solaris machines out there have the correct sendmail.cf, and my users
> aren't particularly understanding when the mail doesn't go through.

I wonder if it's related to the following problem that I got a while back:

... while talking to richard2.pil.net.:
>>> DATA
<<< 451 Put ,E=\r\n at the end of Mether, Mtcp, or Msmtp in sendmail.cf if
you are using Solaris 2.5 (fixed in 2.5.1). I cannot accept messages with
stray newlines. Many SMTP servers will time out waiting for \r\n.\r\n.
<sages@pil.net>... Deferred: 451 Put ,E=\r\n at the end of Mether, Mtcp,
or Msmtp in sendmail.cf if you are using Solaris 2.5 (fixed in 2.5.1). I
cannot accept messages with stray newlines. Many SMTP servers will time
out waiting for \r\n.\r\n.
Warning: message still undelivered after 8 hours
Will keep trying until message is 5 days old

BTW, this is not a Solaris specific problem, I've seen this from a
Sendmail server on Linux, and a tcl script from a web server. Sendmail
can tolerate the mising \r and \n, Dan really ought to consider making
qmail tis "fault tolerant" (IMHO)

James Smallacombe Internet Access for Bucks County
james@pil.net And Philadelphia, PA.
PlantageNet Internet Ltd. http://www.pil.net
"I'll plant Plantagenet, root him up who dares." 3Henry Vi, I,i

At 11:01 AM 3/17/97 -0800, you wrote:
>I've just recently switched our mail server to Qmail and am loving it so
>far. However, we recently ran into the problem with sendmail.cf on a
>Solaris 2.4 machine (our web server) that prevented it from sending to our
>mail server. We were able to get this fixed, but what concerns me about
>this is that there was no notification on the sender's side that there was
>a problem, it simply queued the mail.
>
>I'm now wondering how common this problem is, and if there is anything I
>can do on my side to prevent qmail from rejecting these messages. While
>this might technically be sendmail's fault, I can't assume that all the
>solaris machines out there have the correct sendmail.cf, and my users
>aren't particularly understanding when the mail doesn't go through.

As you may know, problems in general are very common on Sendmail machines,
particularly Solaris. That's one of the [main] reasons I upgraded to qmail
on our mail server.

Without knowing the actual configuration problem, I'm not sure if you'll be
able to receive the answer you're looking for, but this is something that I
ran into: If the sendmail box thought that it was mailing to a local
domain, and/or it had the primary sendmail.cf config file instead of the
secondary file (where Sendmail believes it to be the main mail gateway for
the network, instead of a secondary relay), sendmail is queuing the mail on
your web server, which means it is not contacting the qmail box, so qmail
knows nothing about the mail.

Also, be warned that the Sendmail packed with Solaris is *not* very recent,
and is not up to the most recent Berkeley standards, and is tough to put
that way. There are certain "Solaris-only" constructs in the sendmail.cf
file that are not easily converted to Sendmail 8.8.x (close to impossible
without documentation, in my case...)

Personally, I would recommend upgrading you're WWW box to qmail as well,
and methinks that should solve your problems... at least it did mine.

Hope this helps,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger
--
Roger Merchberger | Everyone complained to me to change my .sig,
Programmer, NorthernWay | but no-one could recommend something better.
zmerch@northernway.net | So you'll have to put up with this *junk*
| until I find some new wisdom to share.