More problems?

[David Bandel]

On 6/29/06, Bill Campbell <linux-sxs at celestial.com> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 29, 2006, David Bandel wrote:
> >On 6/29/06, Bill Campbell <linux-sxs at celestial.com> wrote:
> ...
> >> The HELO our postfix mail server got on this message looks seriously wierd
> >> ``???connection?timed?out??no?servers?could?be?reached'' from IP address,
> >> 64.117.232.19.
> >
> >Bizarre.  I see that.  This is a DNS issue, but DNS is working.
> >Really odd thing is how _fast_ is gives the connection time-out.
>
> This message had a similar HELO greeting.  I think that the
> linux-sxs MTA is sendmail, based on seeing ``milter'' headers
> amongst the rest, and I know next to nothing about sendmail
> having avoided it for the last fifteen years.

yep, it is sendmail.  I've admin'd sendmail for over 20 years now.
Tried postfix once.  After seven hours I couldn't get it to do
multiple domains (like I do with virtusertable and genericstable) and
had to reinstall sendmail (which I had working correctly in 15
minutes).

>
> I would think that the MTA HELO would be in its configuration,
> not something determined by DNS, but then one of the first things
> I ever saw that I disliked about sendmail was the way some
> sendmail servers rewrote headers -- particulary when they rewrote
> my Reply-To headers in ways that broke the uucp return path.

No, when someone connects, sendmail does a reverse dns lookup on them.
 But it's failing in milliseconds (although DNS works fine for all
other programs on the system) and your system is interpreting the
failure message as the ehlo.

[snip]

David A. Bandel
-- 
Focus on the dream, not the competition.
            - Nemesis Air Racing Team motto