[vox-tech] introduction & debian / mutt / exim question

Wed, 16 Apr 2003 13:55:07 -0700

[All: Sorry for the inbox flood! I inadvertantly passed the wrong flags 
      to my e-mail formatting utility and it garbled some of the text on
      my last note. This one should be easier to read! -jam]

Mike,

>   The message you sent to this list appears to have come directly from
> fastmail.fm... not enough information to comment.

I've temporarily stopped using mutt/exim since I can't rely on it to
send messages. Right now I'm using a webmail account from fastmail.

> - What do you see in /var/log/exim ? (check mainlog and paniclog)

There's no paniclog, but pieces of mainlog are given elsewhere in this  
e-mail.                                                                 

> - When you send email via exim what hostname does it claim to come
> from?

mnemosyne. I sent e-mail to a domain that almost always accepts my
e-mail (tricity.wsu.edu). Here are the full headers from the message
as received there. This message was sent with exim configured to relay
e-mail through mail.pacbell.net:

by mta5.snfc21.pbi.net (iPlanet Messaging Server 5.1 HotFix 1.6 (built
Oct 18
2002)) with ESMTP id <0HDG003CLEA8N8@mta5.snfc21.pbi.net> for
jmcphers@beta.tricity.wsu.edu; Wed, 16 Apr 2003 13:30:08 -0700 (PDT)
Received: from jam by mnemosyne with local (Exim 3.36 #1 (Debian))
        id 195u3u-0000nw-00     for <jmcphers@beta.tricity.wsu.edu>; Wed,
16 Apr 2003 14:03:22 -0700
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 2003 14:03:22 -0700
From: Jonathan McPherson <jamcp@imap.cc>
Subject: testing again
Sender: Jonathan McPherson <jam@mnemosyne>
To: jmcphers@beta.tricity.wsu.edu
Reply-to: jamcp@imap.cc
Message-id: <20030416210321.GB3083@mnemosyne>
Organization: University of California, Davis
MIME-version: 1.0
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT
Content-disposition: inline
User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.4i

> - How static is your external IP address on the DSL line? (zgrep
> 'local IP' /var/log/messages*)

That command doesn't return anything, so I'm guessing my IP is fairly   
static. I browsed a few of the /var/log/messages* files by hand with    
less and used /IP to look for anything related -- nothing..             

> Steps to collect more useful information:
> 
>   - Setup your machine so that it sends mail directly, 
>     - send to your own UCD address
>       - check if it gets through.
>       - check what exim logs say.  

It gets sent, but UCD rejects it for a fairly obvious reason:

(from exim's logs)
2003-04-16 14:11:37 195uBn-0000oX-00 ** jamcp@ucdavis.edu R=lookuphost
T=remote_smtp: SMTP error from remote mailer after MAIL
FROM:<jam@mnemosyne> SIZE=1648: host smtp.ucdavis.edu [169.237.104.162]:
501 5.1.8 Domain of sender address jam@mnemosyne does not exist

(message delivered to /var/mail/jam)
  jamcp@ucdavis.edu
    SMTP error from remote mailer after MAIL FROM:<jam@mnemosyne>
+SIZE=1648:
    host smtp.ucdavis.edu [169.237.104.162]: 501 5.1.8 Domain of sender
+address jam@mnemosyne does not exist

>   - Repeat the test above with exim configured to relay via 
>     pacbell and fastmail.fm.

No errors given. The logs look like this for one of my 
successful messages:

2003-04-16 14:03:22 195u3u-0000nw-00 <= jam@mnemosyne U=jam P=local S=611
id=20030416210321.GB3083@mnemosyne
2003-04-16 14:03:22 195u3u-0000nw-00 => jmcphers@beta.tricity.wsu.edu
R=smarthost T=remote_smtp H=mail.pacbell.net [206.13.28.241]
2003-04-16 14:03:22 195u3u-0000nw-00 Completed

and here's one for a failed message:

2003-04-16 14:01:29 195u25-0000no-00 <= jam@mnemosyne U=jam P=local S=586
id=20030416210129.GA3083@mnemosyne
2003-04-16 14:01:30 195u25-0000no-00 => jamcp@ucdavis.edu R=smarthost
T=remote_smtp H=mail.pacbell.net [206.13.28.241]
2003-04-16 14:01:30 195u25-0000no-00 Completed

No differences I can see except the e-mail address I'm sending to.

>   You should be using pacbell as a relay if they are your ISP.

Yep ... I have been. (-:

>   I have a SBC DSL line as well but I don't use it to send outbound
> mail... so I don't have a configuration to send. If something weird
> is really going on I can get it working here and send the config
> examples.

After the above, I'm starting to suspect that reason my messages are
being rejected is that my hostname (mnemosyne) is local and doesn't
resolve in the outside world.

So, my questions:

(1) What should I set the "visible mail name of my system" to in
    eximconfig? My IP address? the name of my ISP's mail server? If the
    former, how do I keep it updated when my DSL switches IP's?

(2) Do I also need to use the "hostname = ..." setting in my
    muttrc? If so, what do I set that to? (I've noticed that
    setting the hostname in muttrc makes a difference in the exim
    log files... "id=20030416210129.GA3083@mnemosyne" becomes
    "id=20030416210129.GA3083@mail.pacbell.net" for instance.

Jonathan.