Mail does not get delivered

[torp]

This morning at about 8 (GMT) I started to receive bounceback messages from my server. I searched the forums, and updated my exim.pl file and removed the 'condition' statement in lookuphost in exim.conf

However, this did not solve the problem.

The posts I saw in the forums where others had the same problem reported that email was delivered. However, in my case, most email don't get delivered. I have verified this through my logs. I am not receiving most of the emails sent to me today.

This is a problem with emails coming from or being sent to outside of the server. Internal mail works fine.

The error I see in the logfile is

2005-10-03 16:04:24 H=(mail1.domain.com) [204.128.192.18] sender verify defer for <[email protected]>: host lookup did not complete 2005-10-03 16:04:24 H=(mail1.domain.com) [204.128.192.18] F=<[email protected]> temporarily rejected RCPT <[email protected]>: Could not complete sender verify 2005-10-03 16:04:24 H=(mail1.domain.com) [204.128.192.18] incomplete transaction (RSET) from <[email protected]>

I have of course substituted the real recipient's domain and username, and my own in this error.

I have verified this by contacting the people sending me emails per phone, and they have verified that emails have been sent to me at the exact time they were rejected on my server.

Any chance of anyone knowing what this might be, or what I can do to fix it?

 

[torp]

Not able to resolve external hosts

I am not actually able to resolve external hosts at all. Not even files.directadmin.com.

No ping-ing either. "Host not found".

Something to do with my firewall? That would be very strange, considering I'm able to check email, access web- and DA server, plus FTP.

 

[toml]

Not strange at all. Just because you can resolve host names does not mean incoming connections don't work. Things to check, are that your name servers are set correctly in /etc/resolv.conf, it should include a line with each of your name servers. If you are running a local name server (DA does by default), then your name server should be on the top, so that it gets checked first. The next thing, you should make sure port 53 is open in to your server for external name servers and out if you are running a name server.

The message exim is telling you, has to do with the sender_verify setting in exim. It tells exim to make sure it is a valid email address before sending the message on. If it can't resolve the domain, then it automatically assumes that the sender does not exist, and bounces the message. In this case it is defering the check, since it didn't receive a definitive answer.

 

[torp]

In my resolv.conf file there are two IP addresses, none of which are mine. How can this be? Should the two lines be my own IP addresses that I use for my nameservers?

However, they are owned by my ISP. But I run my own nameservers, still, and there's no record of these IP addresses in DA panel. In IP manager, my own two IP addresses are entered.

 

[toml]

The resolv.conf gets populated with whatever you told it to when the network card was configured. Since you are running a nameserver yourself, you should have your own IP set as the first entry. DA does not do that for you, you need to do that yourself.

 

[torp]

Thanks for the info!

I should probably only have my own IP addresses there, right? Both of them...

 

[toml]

At least one, if you have two addresses on different computers then I would put two. If both are on the same system, then just put the one, otherwise if there is something wrong with your DNS, then the same server is searched twice and fails. The minimum you should have is something like this:

nameserver my_ip_address
nameserver my_isp_dns_address

 

[torp]

Thanks!

For some reason it's working again, without me doing anything about this file... Don't know what happened.

If the two IP addresses are both owned by my ISP. Is there any reason to change it? Should I change one of them to be the IP of the server the file is on?

 

[nobaloney]

There's always a reason .

Probably a problem with one or both of the nameservers in resolv.conf.

My guess is both IP#s are nameservers belonging to your host.

I'd check them both.

For example, if the first line has 123.45.67.89 then I'd run:

dig @123.45.67.89 earthlink.net

and if you don't get an A record answer, then that nameserver isn't working.

I'd do it for both nameservers.

While we don't use our local nameserver for resolving domains outside our servers, you can: simply add a line at the top for "127.0.0.1". Then the system will always try your own nameserver first.

Jeff