Email issues

Let me see if I can explain this properly.

My DA server is da1.control8.com. Running Centos 4.2 and latest DA.

I have multiple websites hosted on this server. One is www.northcountymarketplace.com and one is www.ctrl8.com. I was using pop mail for both websites. Now all the mail for ctrl8.com is sent to my company's local exchange server. This works great for all the users out in the world.

However, if I log in to webmail for [email protected] and attempt to send an email to [email protected], I receive the message: It was not possible to send this e-mail.

exim mainlog:
2006-05-17 17:02:02 H=localhost (71.140.238.241) [127.0.0.1] F=<[email protected]> rejected RCPT <[email protected]>:
2006-05-17 17:02:02 H=localhost (71.140.238.241) [127.0.0.1] incomplete transaction (RSET) from <[email protected]>

exim reject log:
2006-05-17 17:02:02 H=localhost (71.140.238.241) [127.0.0.1] F=<[email protected]> rejected RCPT <[email protected]>:

ctrl8.com DNS
ctrl8.com. A 206.251.242.80
ftp A 206.251.242.80
localhost A 127.0.0.1
mail.ctrl8.com. A 71.140.238.241
www A 206.251.242.80
ctrl8.com. NS ns1.control8.com.
ctrl8.com. NS ns2.control8.com.
mail MX 10
ctrl8.com. TXT "v=spf1 a mx ip4:206.251.242.80 ?all"

Any help out there?

catch-all

If I turn on catch all, then Uebimiau no longer gives the message, but the message still ends up the the catch-all mail account. [email protected] is a valid email account. If the email originates from gmail or some other external server, it goes through.

When you move email for a site off the server you need to log on to DA as the site user, click on MX records and change the mx record there to point t the right server, uncheck the box, and save.

Jeff

did that

I did that. All email from the outsite world now comes directly to my exchange server. The only email that I don't get are ones that originate from the server itself. For instance, if I use Uebi to send a message to [email protected], the email fails. (Actually, since I setup a catch-all, it ends up there now.) Since I provide web and email hosting to clients, it would not look good if the email they sent me, didn't work.

I also have a helpdesk system on that server that sends automatic emails when someone logs a new request. System works fine as long as the email is not going to ctrl8.com.

All systems seemed to be working fine until I moved the email from pop3 on the server to my exchange server.

It seems as though the system does not know how to route the emails off the server. Perhaps it is confused because www.ctrl8.com is local and mail.ctrl8.com is not?

If you've done what I wrote, that handles the problem of a remote mail server. If it's not working someone is going to have to investigate it on your server.

Jeff

I am hoping someone here can help.

I have a domain called ctrl8.com. The website is hosted on my server called da1.control8.com. Their email is routed off the server with an MX record. If I use ubi webmail to send a message to ctrl8.com, it fails. If I use webmail to send to a domain that is using local pop accounts, it works.

Also, where can I find a document that will explain each part of the Exim log? ie, F=, H= etc. I would like to understand this better.

If you've done what I've said above and something doesn't work, then your files are out of sync with your control panel (I don't know how that could happen).

Your best bet is to use exim -bh from your command line to try a manual email test. You can find information on exim -bh both here in these forums, and in the exim manpage (and also on the exim.org site and by searching the archives of the exim mailing list). Then you'll see the problem.

The exim log format used by DA is unique to DA; I designed it to be able to track spammers and virus-senders as easily as possible. It's documented in the exim.conf file, and the various sections are well documented on the exim.org site.

Jeff

Might have found the issue.

In exim.conf under Routher Configuration it is that exim is configured so that "Any domain that resolves to an IP address on the loopback interface (127.0.0.0/8) is
treated as if it had no DNS entry." In other words, it will not route mail off the server to domains that are listed in the "etc/virtual/domains" file.

I removed ctrl8.com from the domains file. Email from webmail now flows off the server. Is this what I need to do for all my hosted domains that have off-server email?

Will the spamassasin still work for these domains?

Do I need spam filter and spamassasin? If not, which is better?

I'm glad I stumbled on this thread because next week I would have ran into the exact same problem as you when I have to change the mx record of one of my clients to point to his exchange server.

I do not want to pretend that I know anything about this stuff, but I do believe you've found the cause of the problem.

I assume you're using the default DA exim.conf or SpamBlocker's exim.conf? If so then the "lookuphost:" router you found is the only router that will forward mail to external smtp servers.
But it will only do so if:
1) the domain name does not resolve to localhost, and
2) the domain name is not present in local_domains (e.g. /etc/virtual/domains)

Both restrictions seem reasonable, at first... But what if the MX record points to an off-site IP address, like in your case? I would assume there would be another router before the "lookuphost:" router that would first check if the IP address of the MX record points to an IP address that is known on the local server. If it is it would fall through to the "lookuphost:" router, but if it isn't it could immediately invoke the remote_smtp transport.

But since such a router doesn't exist, and neither does a rule in the "lookuphost:" router that checks this, the easy way out seems to be to remove the domain from "local_domains", just as you concluded.

Laurie, yes, you "found the issue". However the change should have been made for you when you unchecked the "X" and saved the page, as I mentioned previously. I've checked on one of our servers and it works properly.

Can you show us the output of this command:
I'd like to see why your system isn't making the change as it should. I'm the person who wrote the exim.conf file and I knew when I replied (although I didn't take the time to look anything up then) and I know now, how the system is supposed to work. I can't tell why the file isn't being managed properly, though .

Jeff

I can't speek for Laurie of course, but in my case I don't allow my users to modify their own DNS records and I had never noticed that "X" option before. So I would just have gone into the admin level and changed the IP addres of the MX record through DNS configuration, and would have then wondered why mail from local account would not get forwarded to the external server. It's not really "obvious" that this has to be done through the user-level. But I'm glad that I know now how this works before running into the same problem

(Maybe Laurie made the same mistake I was about to make?)

There have been several discussions on my choice, and a few people have said I should change it.

But I really don't have a choice. If I send email hosted locally out through SMTP and follow the MX record I create a mail-loop and incoming email never gets delivered. Try it if you dare .

Jeff

jlasman said:

Try it if you dare

Click to expand...

I searched the forum and found several threads dealing with this topic. One solution posted by Chrysalis was to comment out domains = ! +local_domains and adding self = pass, which is similar to the solution I was thinking about. But as you pointed out this can still create a loop if people use a junk email filter for example. I can't think of a better solution. The way it works now is probably best (which isn't really surprising since you know so much about this subject ).
Thank you for the info!

It's not just me, Aspegic. I got a lot of input, none of it supportive, when I asked a lot of the real exim gurus (including the gent who wrote exim .

Jeff

Here is how I setup the mx record

The mx record already pointed to mail so this is what I did.

Logged in as admin
go to DNS administration
selected domain to edit
removed a record for host mail
type in new a record for host mail with outside ip address.

Is there a better way to do this?

If the admin allows DNS management to the users there's a user level link to MX records which makes it easy .

Jeff

For one of my clients I changed the IP address of his "mail" A record to his external exchange mail server. The corresponding MX record has priority 10.

As a backup I added a second MX record with priority 20 that has a corresponding A record which points to my own DA server.

I'm wondering if mail will get delivered localy if my clients external mail server is down, because I had to remove his domain name from /etc/virtual/domains to make sure mail from another local domains would be relayed to his external server.

How can I use my local DA server as a backup in case the external mail server is down?