Linux Mail Server problems, help please!

I have a redhat 9 computer connected to my ADSL modem with an ethernet cable,
the computer is always on, connects to Internet via PPPoe with Roaring
Penguin script to make the connection. I have a FQDN for this machine with
DNS and MX record provided by no-ip.com. I run sendmail-8.12.8-9.90 on this
machine and have used it as a mail server for years.

Recently, a friend sent me an email and I never got it. I then sent myself an
email and sure enough, I never got the mail. The email did not bounce, it was
sent ok, but seems to have vanished after that point. So, I decided to do a
little testing to see if I could determine what the problem is. I used telnet
to send an email to my mail server to see what would happen.

(I munged the email addresses for the purpose of this example but this is a
"copy and paste" from a real telnet session. "Missy" is in my /etc/hosts file
as 192.168.0.3. I have 3 machines on my LAN)

-------------------------------------------------
220 ohmster.com ESMTP Sendmail 8.12.8/8.12.8; Sat, 24 Jul 2004 17:03:30 -0400
EHLO test.com
250-recipient.com Hello missy [192.168.0.3], pleased to meet you
250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
250-PIPELINING
250-8BITMIME
250-SIZE
250-DSN
250-ETRN
250-DELIVERBY
250 HELP
MAIL FROM:(E-Mail Removed)
250 2.1.0 (E-Mail Removed)... Sender ok
RCPT TO:(E-Mail Removed)
250 2.1.5 (E-Mail Removed)... Recipient ok
DATA
354 Enter mail, end with "." on a line by itself
Subject: test message

This is a test message you will not see a response from this command.
..
250 2.0.0 i6OL3Ubb024432 Message accepted for delivery
quit
221 2.0.0 recipient.com closing connection
-------------------------------------------------

Now, when I log into the linux system, I see that I do indeed have mail and
can read it with mail, or pine. I can also read the mail with Outlook Express
on my LAN machine via pop3.

Now all of this telnet testing works, just as it should, BUT, when I send
regular mail from anywhere, with a regular email client, the email just
"vanishes". Even if I send mail to myself on the same system with pine, the
message is sent but when I exit pine, I do not get the "You have new mail."
message, nor is there any mail for me. If I check /var/spool/mail/myname, it
is a 0 byte file. If I send a test mail via telnet, I get an actual mail file
in /var/spool/mail and I can read the mail.

How can email vanish this? If mail cannot be sent, it should bounce. This
means that the mail is really being accepted by sendmail on my system but it
is not going to /var/spool/mail. If this is so, then where is it going and
how come the telnet test emails do come through as expected?

This sendmail server has been running for years and I have not changed
anything recently. I am really stumped now and do not know what to do or how
else to find out what is wrong. Somebody, please, some networking guru
somewhere, please help me! How can I diagnose and fix this?

Thank you.

--
My email address is invalid, thanks to
all of these rotten spambots.
Email me by assembling this address:
tinykitty "ay tea" ohmster "dee oh tea" com
~Ohmster
(I guess that you really cannot email me now until this gets fixed!)

Ohmster wrote:
> I have a redhat 9 computer connected to my ADSL modem with an ethernet cable,
> the computer is always on, connects to Internet via PPPoe with Roaring
....
>
> (I munged the email addresses for the purpose of this example but this is a
> "copy and paste" from a real telnet session. "Missy" is in my /etc/hosts file
> as 192.168.0.3. I have 3 machines on my LAN)

Is your IP address really 192.168.0.3 ?

This is a private network address. It's internal to your home, not seems
anywhere outside of your own network.

But surely this isn't a sendmail issue.

"Ohmster" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Xns9530B2F824A15mybigone@216.77.188.18

> How can email vanish this? If mail cannot be sent, it should bounce.
> This means that the mail is really being accepted by sendmail on my
> system but it is not going to /var/spool/mail. If this is so, then
> where is it going and how come the telnet test emails do come through
> as expected?

Is there some reason why you're not looking in the maillog for the entries
describing the email you've sent?

--
use hotmail for email replies

Jose Marcio Martins da Cruz <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:(E-Mail Removed):

> Is your IP address really 192.168.0.3 ?

That is the address of the XP machine on the LAN that is doing the testing to
the redhat machine. The redhat machine has the actual IP address on it's NIC
#1 and it also has a 2nd NIC with an IP of 192.168.0.1, which connects to a
hub and serves the other two windows machines.

--
My email address is invalid, thanks to
all of these rotten spambots.
Email me by assembling this address:
tinykitty "ay tea" ohmster "dee oh tea" com
~Ohmster

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
NotDashEscaped: You need GnuPG to verify this message

In comp.os.linux.networking Ohmster <(E-Mail Removed)> suggested:
> I have a redhat 9 computer connected to my ADSL modem with an ethernet cable,
> the computer is always on, connects to Internet via PPPoe with Roaring
> Penguin script to make the connection. I have a FQDN for this machine with
> DNS and MX record provided by no-ip.com. I run sendmail-8.12.8-9.90 on this
> machine and have used it as a mail server for years.

> Recently, a friend sent me an email and I never got it. I then sent myself an
> email and sure enough, I never got the mail. The email did not bounce, it was

What about the most obvious, checking /var/log/maillog for any
hints about the problem?

--
Michael Heiming (GPG-Key ID: 0xEDD27B94)
mail: echo (E-Mail Removed) | perl -pe 'y/a-z/n-za-m/'
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Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (GNU/Linux)

iD8DBQFBAuiRAkPEju3Se5QRAj+UAJ4h8Tlu/Tp0ouV4tGJnRapxA8RGdACeKMq/
rb0+9lBxKZsp9Vs8McXX0ik=
=zXaZ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

"ynotssor" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in news:(E-Mail Removed):

> Is there some reason why you're not looking in the maillog for the entries
> describing the email you've sent?

Hmmm, great idea!

I did a tail -f on the maillog and then sent myself an email from my windows
machine to my linux machine. Mail was sent with no problems. The maillog did
not budge or show any new entries.

I then did the same tail -f on the maillog and sent myself an email from the
windows machine to myself on the linux machine with a telnet test session and
the maillog showed the event...

Jul 24 18:42:07 ohmster sendmail[26063]: i6OMfAbb026063:
from=(E-Mail Removed), size=92, class=0, nrcpts=1,
msgid=<(E-Mail Removed)>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA,
relay=missy [192.168.0.3]
Jul 24 18:42:07 ohmster sendmail[26067]: i6OMfAbb026063:
to=(E-Mail Removed), delay=00:00:33, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local,
pri=30393, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent

This is so frustrating! I cannot see what actually happens when someone like
you sends me an email to my server, you send the mail and all is well, but I
end up with no email in /var/spool/mail/. How can we actually see what the
problem is here and how can we fix it?

--
My email address is invalid, thanks to
all of these rotten spambots.
Email me by assembling this address:
tinykitty "ay tea" ohmster "dee oh tea" com
~Ohmster

Michael Heiming <michael+(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in news:it5bt1-
(E-Mail Removed):

> What about the most obvious, checking /var/log/maillog for any
> hints about the problem?

Just did that Mike, see my reply above. Nothing shows up in the maillog for
messages sent to me that dissappear but the ones that do make it to my
mailbox, done via the telnet test, create a normal mallog entry. What do you
think?

--
My email address is invalid, thanks to
all of these rotten spambots.
Email me by assembling this address:
tinykitty "ay tea" ohmster "dee oh tea" com
~Ohmster

"Ohmster" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:Xns9530C063E6170mybigone@216.196.97.138

> Jul 24 18:42:07 ohmster sendmail[26063]: i6OMfAbb026063:
> from=(E-Mail Removed), size=92, class=0, nrcpts=1,
> msgid=<(E-Mail Removed)>, proto=ESMTP,
> daemon=MTA, relay=missy [192.168.0.3]
> Jul 24 18:42:07 ohmster sendmail[26067]: i6OMfAbb026063:
> to=(E-Mail Removed), delay=00:00:33, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=local,
> pri=30393, dsn=2.0.0, stat=Sent
>
> This is so frustrating! I cannot see what actually happens when
> someone like you sends me an email to my server, you send the mail
> and all is well, but I end up with no email in /var/spool/mail/. How
> can we actually see what the problem is here and how can we fix it?

The first step in the diagnostic has been completed successfully; the local
delivery agent (LDA) has delivered the mail according to the log entries
above.

Now you'll want to verify your assumption that the mailbox exists in
/var/spool/mail/ but wasn't involved.

The mtime of the file should coincide with the time that the LDA delivered
to the mbox, or else the time that the client most recently checked for new
mail:

$ ls -l `env | grep -i mail | cut -d= -f2`

If the file is of 0 size but the mtime is later than the timestamp in the
maillog (18:42 in the example above), then some client application has
apparently already retrieved the mail, and you should examine the logfile of
the pop/imap server to see when the message was retrieved and by what IP
address.


tony

--
use hotmail for email replies

> Recently, a friend sent me an email and I never got it. I then sent myself
an
> email and sure enough, I never got the mail. The email did not bounce, it
was
> sent ok, but seems to have vanished after that point. So, I decided to do
a
> little testing to see if I could determine what the problem is. I used
telnet
> to send an email to my mail server to see what would happen.

[root@RHEL-WS3 SOURCES]# telnet mail.ohmster.com 25
Trying 65.12.220.9...
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out

Looks like your missing mail is probably sitting in the remote mail queues,
waiting for your link to come up???


Bimble Sprocket
-- names are such crap

"Bimble Sprocket" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in
news:41030503$(E-Mail Removed):

> [root@RHEL-WS3 SOURCES]# telnet mail.ohmster.com 25
> Trying 65.12.220.9...
> telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out
>
> Looks like your missing mail is probably sitting in the remote mail queues,
> waiting for your link to come up???

Eh? I got stuck out on a broken node of the internet? You cannot reach me?
Ugh, what to do about this... Bitch to my ISP?

--
My email address is invalid, thanks to
all of these rotten spambots.
Email me by assembling this address:
tinykitty "ay tea" ohmster "dee oh tea" com
~Ohmster