DirectAdmin Update to 1.651 Causing Email to 421 Error

[JayWelch]

Hi! Our server updated DirectAdmin from 1.643 -> 1.651 yesterday. As soon as it finished, I started getting phone calls that mail was not coming in for a number of people. After checking through the mail logs on a few test messages I sent from an external server, I saw that our SMTP server is generating a 421 (failed server response) in the mail logs when trying to mail to the DirectAdmin server. I restarted the services and the server itself, and no change. I also confirmed that no one can send email to this server without getting a 421... except for addresses that are located directly on the server itself. Mailboxes on the server can send mail normally, AND they can send and receive but ONLY if the originating and recipient address are located on the same server.

I though maybe the Brute Force Monitor had banned something, but no. It's functioning normally.

Does anyone have any ideas? Heck. Is it possible to just roll back to 1.643?

 

[JayWelch]

Got it!
Looks like exim which is what the server is using for mail transport started looking for a file called pophosts since the directadmin forced update
this was in the logs
failed to open /etc/virtual/pophosts for linear search: No such file or directory

I ssh'ed into the box and created a blank file named pophosts in the correct directory (it was non existant)
restarted exim and bam outside mail started flowing

hope this helps someone
cheers,
Keith

 

[Richard G]

hope this helps someone

Maybe somebody who upgrade with that big a version difference. So thanks you for sharing, I had no clue either.

However, I remembered that the pophost was not used anymore for some time already. Which is the reason why suddenly your pophosts file got removed.

Version 1.646 | Directadmin Docs

DirectAdmin Knowledge Base

docs.directadmin.com

There is a lot changed between those versions, so you probably also need to update quite some other things like custombuild and exim and exim.conf which probably is not done yet, since Exim stopped working after the upgrade due to the pophost issue.

All updates now are done via DA releases so you might encounter a lot of updates now.

 

[factor]

Looks like exim which is what the server is using for mail transport started looking for a file called pophosts

Like @Richard G said pophost is not supported in exim any more.

You might see if you locked your exim versions. If not try running

cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
./build update
./build exim
./build exim_conf

and delete the file you added.

If you did lock your exim version you will need to remove your versions file for exim and then do the above.

 

[poud001]

hope this helps someone

It helped me also Jay! And I think a lot people more (two of my servers updated yesterday automatically).