Re: [Savannah-hackers-public] MTA problems on internal

[Ward Vandewege]

Hi Bob,

On Thu, Apr 25, 2013 at 05:19:55PM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> The VM internal is having problems with the MTA.  Running mailq there
> shows many messages that are "frozen".  Doing some testing it looks
> like Exim is still delivering messages to at least some addresses.
> But others, such as root email, is not being delivered.
> 
> Does anyone know if there is anything special about the MTA
> configuration on the VMs?  Internal seems misconfigured.
> 
>   $ connect localhost 25
>   220 colonialone.fsf.org ESMTP Exim 4.72 Thu, 25 Apr 2013 23:17:59 +0000
>   QUIT
>   221 colonialone.fsf.org closing connection
> 
> As to the problems the logs are indicating:
> 
>   2013-04-25 23:06:55 1UVVFf-00012Z-As == address@hidden R=dnslookup 
> T=remote_smtp defer (111): Connection refused
> 
> Connection refused sounds like a configuration problem.  But if I test
> mail delivery manually I can do it.  Mail is sent through okay.  So
> the problem seems to be local to frontend and not a firewall or
> misconfiguration on the other end.

It's only mail to address@hidden that was stuck. That mail is
configured to be forwarded to address@hidden via
/etc/aliases.

But exim on internal didn't know that internal.savannah.gnu.org was its own
domain/hostname. 

In fact someone (in 2011) had hardcoded the old hostname of that machine in
/etc/exim4/exim4.conf.template... The proper way for a simple exim setup like
this would have been to use dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config and tell Exim its
local domain. 

I removed the hardcoded hostname, updated /etc/exim4/update-exim4.conf.conf
(which is what dpkg-reconfigure exim4-config does), and redelivered the
frozen messages.

Thanks,
Ward.

-- 
Ward Vandewege             | CTO, Free Software Foundation
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