A exim problem

Headmaster

Verified User
Joined
Sep 4, 2003
Messages
5
Hi there,

My EXIM was working fine yesterday, but today all of my server's default pop email account ( the account login id same as system id on /etc/passwd ) can't receive email.

For an example , my hostname is abc.com, and I create a user call
love and domain is love.com, yesterday the email can go though [email protected], but today only reply :

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (Exim).

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

[email protected]
(ultimately generated from [email protected])
forced failure:

I had checked that the dns is fine and email account others than [email protected] can send and receive email ([email protected] , [email protected]) , also others domain on my server got the same issue...

Is there any setting make this happen ?


Thx a lot !
 
Hello,

Check the hostname of the server and make sure that you do *not* have any domains with that name. Eg: don't use a hostname called domain.com if you plan on getting email to domain.com. Use server.domain.com as the hostname.

What is probably happening is if you created a domain which is the same as the hostname, when system email is being sent, the catch-all for your hostname-domain is catching all the email, and forcing it to fail.

Fix: change your hostname to server.domain.com

John
 
if other domains have the same problem then how could it be that he has to change the hostname? I believe you are referring to the primary hostname of the admin right? (because of the server part)

If that's true no other domains should be affected imho.
 
Yes, the main hostname will affect all system users because all unix email accounts are in fact:

[email protected]

so when the admin (or whoever) create hostname.com in DirectAdmin, they will steal all system email. Exim will think that the mail is virtual email, and will be sent to the catch all.

So for example one of you users has domain.com.. with system account bob (da login will be "bob").

When someone sends an email to [email protected], exim see's the alias:
bob: bob
which then forwards the mail to [email protected] (automatically adds @hostname.com to system mail). Normally, this would just go to their system email account, but because you've create a domain called hostname.com, hostname.com will catch the email in it's catch all, and the email will be dealt with accordingly, either dumping it all to one email address, or dropping it, etc...

That is why you can't create a domain that has the same value as your hostname.

Simple fix, change your hostname to server.whatever.com

John
 
Where can I change the hostname? Is it just the hostname that is set on the system. I have the dns for server1.domain.com set on another DNS server, should I be removing this DNS entry for mail to be delivered properly??
Or should I be editting one of the exim files??

If it helps the system DirectAdmin is on is FreeBSD 4.9
 
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