Exim 4.94 problem after upgrade

G

gjvdheuvel

Verified User
Joined
May 25, 2016
Messages
16
Huge problem after upgrade to Exim 4.94 ... Mail is acting very weird.

I cannot mail from one domain to another, always error 421 via SMTP. If I use Roundcube, all is fine.
I updated to Exim 4.94, updated exim_conf to 4.5 en did a fresh ./build update, exim, exim_conf and dovecot.

I also get no email from the outside world, from gmail or hotmail, no new mail comes in.
I can mail outside from domains to gmail using smtp and roundcube.

Please let me know where I made a mistake, this is driving me nuts and I cannot figure it out.
Let me know if I need to post any configs or such ....
 
Try to revert to 4.93.04 search for how to's on this forum

If that dont help you can try this :

Code: 
cd /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild
./build update
./build exim
./build exim_conf
mv /etc/dovecot /etc/dovecot~moved 
./build dovecot
./build dovecot_conf
 
In this case I'd suggest that it's important to consider that the update may be irrelevant. It may not be, but the symptoms sound a lot like a different problem. If you can use Roundcube to send mail back and forth between email accounts on the server, this suggests highly that your exim/dovecot instances may be working fine.

Check your DNS at whatsmydns.net. Make sure that the MX records for your domain actually do point back to your DA server today. You'd be in good company if you accidentally let a domain expire or something, plenty of us have done it.

If your DNS truly is all fine, then one of these should be true:

1. The traffic isn't reaching your server (Could your provider have blocked or redirected SMTP traffic?)
2. You have logs of what's happening in /var/log/exim/mainlog. What server side errors do you see for the instances of the 421 error? What errors do you see when Gmail tries to connect to deliver mail?
 
There are so many threads about exim 4.94. I wish people would check current threads before starting a new one with nearly the same topic.
 
floyd said:
There are so many threads about exim 4.94. I wish people would check current threads before starting a new one with nearly the same topic.
Click to expand...

I don't see another thread describing this problem. Maybe you could link it for the OP if I've overlooked it?

Otherwise, there will continue to be threads about exim 4.94 until exim 4.95, it doesn't mean they're all related.
 
mxroute said:
In this case I'd suggest that it's important to consider that the update may be irrelevant. It may not be, but the symptoms sound a lot like a different problem. If you can use Roundcube to send mail back and forth between email accounts on the server, this suggests highly that your exim/dovecot instances may be working fine.
Click to expand...

I'm also starting to think this is sheer bad luck, not related to the update, or maybe the update plus switching from an ancient Exim_conf to a recent one was too aggressive and I just miss something.

The weird thing is, DNS wise nothing changed and all of a sudden no more mail from the big outside world to any of the domains, none.
Trying MXtoolbox now
 
I think they are all related. Otherwise there would be just as many threads about the previous versions.

Downgrade to 4.93 and see if that fixes the problem.
 
On 4.94 - Reboot system. try sending a mail (Webmail or IMAP, etc). If it fails, then restart Exim manually (it should take a while). Try sending mail again. If it sends then, then youre issue is probably the same as mine here:

EXIM does not function properly after reboot. Does not send mail. BUG.

Recently I have reinstalled my DirectAdmin server, and added Easy Spam Fighter with BlockCracking to the setup as well. And what I have noticed is that for Mail (EXIM) to work properly after server reboot, I have to do "Update Exim configuration files" (which at the end restarts exim and it...
forum.directadmin.com forum.directadmin.com
 
floyd said:
I think they are all related. Otherwise there would be just as many threads about the previous versions.

Downgrade to 4.93 and see if that fixes the problem.
Click to expand...

Looks like 2x threads about the changing DKIM config. That one bit me too because I have a custom transport, but was my issue.

Then 1x thread about /root/.forward not working and 1x thread about email sitting in queue.

It's really important to not let people combine all of these things into "exim 4.94 is bugged because multiple people ran into issues with their configurations at the same time." That's how you end up with a bunch of people sitting around waiting for "a fix" when they should be troubleshooting the symptoms.

gjvdheuvel said:
The weird thing is, DNS wise nothing changed and all of a sudden no more mail from the big outside world to any of the domains, none.
Trying MXtoolbox now
Click to expand...

Any luck finding log entries of the attempts?
 
Yes there seems to be a few different problems but the common solution that I have seen is to downgrade to 4.93. WE cannot fix the problem. DirectAdmin cannot fix the problem. Only Exim can fix the root problem.
 
floyd said:
Yes there seems to be a few different problems but the common solution that I have seen is to downgrade to 4.93. WE cannot fix the problem. DirectAdmin cannot fix the problem. Only Exim can fix the root problem.
Click to expand...

Which problem can't we fix and why not? The only significant threads right now are this one and the mail stuck in queue one, neither of which we've seen logs for. We don't know that we can't fix it until we know more about what's happening in relation to it. There's already an acceptable fix in the /root/.forward thread.
 
mxroute said:
There's already an acceptable fix in the /root/.forward thread.
Click to expand...

That is a work around. Its a bandage. Its not the cure. Everybody that has downgraded to 4.93 has had their problem solved.
 
I think I will indeed need to downgrade (next issue, how do I downgrade) ...

What I tried so far:
- user permissions and owner for the exim dirs (all okay)
- pophost file on /etc/virtual available (it is, so that's not is)

What is the problem for me still:
- inbound email doesn't work, all senders get a 421 unexpected failure
- outbound mail, all okay (pop or webmail, both okay)

Only conclusion I can find after a weekend of trying, see how to revert to 4.93 because it is driving me insane.
 
update: after reverting back to 4.93 , including exim_conf and rebuilding dovecot and dovecot_conf, still no mail from the outside world.
:-(

I also just tried the 'set_permissions.sh all' from the scripts dir , this also did not help
 
Last edited:
what you see in server logs? maybe you have rejects at sender side? check domain DNS, maybe it expired or wrong MXs
 
Nothing changed in DNS and MX, it always worked ... I started looking into exim logs, and I see an insne amount of:
unknown lookup type "abbey-account-details.com" ... wtf ? I do not own that domain where does this come from ?
 
It turned out I had a corrupted blacklist_domains in my /etc/virtual folder which it never got stuck on, but now with 4.94 it did ....
I had great help from the brilliant people at mc2.dev
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top