Outbound smtp email problems: (110, 'Connection timed out')
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Hello,
I'm having outbound email problems on my qmail-based server. I've had the outbound email working previously on this server, so I know it CAN work. I upgraded Mailman to 2.1.6rc4 since then.
Here's some of the smtp-failures log:
May 15 17:58:22 2005 (6656) Low level smtp error: (110, 'Connection timed out'), msgid: <6.1.2.0.2.20050515175456.0421ac40@pop.bizmail.yahoo.com> May 15 17:58:22 2005 (6656) Low level smtp error: please run connect() first, msgid: <6.1.2.0.2.20050515175456.0421ac40@pop.bizmail.yahoo.com> May 15 17:58:22 2005 (6656) delivery to mailman-admin@mengland.net failed with code -1: (110, 'Connection timed out')
Outbound email from my /bin/mail command is working ok; I am running a virtual lists domain, however, not sure if that has anything to do with it.
While I'm hunting down this bug I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on it for me.
Thanks in advance, -Matt
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 6:20 PM -0500 2005-05-15, Matt England wrote:
Occasional timeouts are not too unusual, if you're on a busy
server. We see them on the python.org mail system, for example.
Outbound email from my /bin/mail command is working ok; I am running a virtual lists domain, however, not sure if that has anything to do with it.
You could be having some reverse DNS problems on the virtual domain.
While I'm hunting down this bug I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on it for me.
From the small amount of information you've provided, it's hard
to say anything more. We'd need more detail, especially including data from the MTA logs to see what it was thinking about those attempts.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Some more info about my system:
MTA = patches qmail 1.03 Mailman = 2.1.6rc4
At 5/15/2005 06:36 PM, Brad Knowles wrote:
Occasional timeouts are not too unusual, if you're on a busy
server. We see them on the python.org mail system, for example.
That's note the case with my host. There's virtually zero load on it at the moment. It's a test server.
Also fyi: all the inbound email to my list is showing up in my pipermail archive.
I tried that, or at least according to Dave Sill's "The qmail handbook," and not difference in behavior.
I'm using tcpserver with qmail-smtpd, and here's my /etc/tcp.smtp:
root@biz2tek 8:47pm [...vpopmail/etc] 136> cat /etc/tcp.smtp 127.:allow,RELAYCLIENT="" root@biz2tek 8:47pm [...vpopmail/etc] 137>
There's absolutely zero qmail-smtpd log entries (from what I can tell) corresponding to a smtp usage from a localhost process. I'm grasping for air here and I find it rather frustrating.
Is there any way I can isolate the outbound/smtp mailman process/program/module? I've got all my other outbound email mechanisms working, but I'm wading through a mountain of modules in mailman trying to figure out exactly which part is responsible for the outbound mail.
Still digging...any other thoughts/troubleshooting welcome, particularly when trying to isolate the outbound email.
-Matt
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
It seems there's some problem with my SMTP server...I'm just trying to figure out what it is or how I can reproduce it other then keeping to point Mailman or phpBB forums at it (both fail for SMTP localhost connections).
I can run the following test ok:
root@biz2tek 10:35pm [~] 1> telnet localhost 25 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. 220 biz2tek.com ESMTP HELO biz2tek.com 250 biz2tek.com HELO lists.biz2tek.com 250 biz2tek.com MAIL FROM: <mailman@lists.biz2tek.com> 250 ok ^H 502 unimplemented (#5.5.1) RCPT TO: <blah@mengland.net> 250 ok ^] telnet> c Connection closed. root@biz2tek 10:41pm [~] 2>
Any other suggestions for testing my localhost SMTP server?
-Matt
At 5/15/2005 09:02 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 11:48 PM -0500 2005-05-15, Matt England wrote:
Unfortunately for you, qmail was never designed to be a drop-in
replacement for sendmail. If you want to use qmail, you've got to drink all the djb kool-aid and completely replace everything in your OS for which there is a djb equivalent.
Postfix is the only MTA that I know of that *was* designed to be
a drop-in replacement for sendmail -- at least, as much as is possible. If you want to learn more about postfix, I'll be glad to give you my summary of why it's one of the best MTAs on the planet for use with mailing list servers, as well as point you at plenty of other resources that are likely to be useful to you.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 5/16/2005 09:11 AM, Brad Knowles wrote:
That's not my understanding. I've got /usr/lib/sendmail linked to a qmail gizmo, and it's been working for months now. It says so in the qmail docs.
Is there something I'm missing?
Also, the Sendmail.py-based Mailman stuff appears to be working with no problems for me (other then the warnings from the Mailman developrs not to use it...which is why I'm in this investigation).
-Matt
Yes, this is a viable option. What more can you tell me and/or what references can you give me? I invite you to take conversation "offline" from the list if that's more appropriate?
One curiosity: I'm curious if Postfix can support virtual domains as well as qmail can? (Maybe that's hard to answer if one does not know qmail.) When I first looked at Postfix, the seemingly massive amount of script/config-file setup was completely overwhelming to me...or was that exim I was checking out? There was some specific set of reasons why I chose qmail over Postfix, but I can't remember them. The fact that yahoo.com and smtp.com both seem to be qmail-based systems have a large pull with me, though; I get the impression Postfix hasn't been around the block as long as qmail, but that does not mean that it's not stable.
Did I just start a postfix-vs-qmail rat hole? (That could probably help me, but it may take away from the list.)
-Matt
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 11:57 AM -0500 2005-05-16, Matt England wrote:
Yes, offline is best.
Did I just start a postfix-vs-qmail rat hole? (That could probably help me, but it may take away from the list.)
Yeah, it's not really a good idea open up that kind of a
flamefest on the list. Best to take it offline.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
"Matt" == Matt England <mengland@mengland.net> writes:
Matt> That's not my understanding. I've got /usr/lib/sendmail
Matt> linked to a qmail gizmo, and it's been working for months
Matt> now. It says so in the qmail docs.
Matt> Is there something I'm missing?
Dan Bernstein is a very smart guy with a different perspective on many things. This has resulted in him producing a slew of unconventional software. It works well in combination with other Bernstein software, but it is designed to be "excellent software" in Bernstein's opinion, NOT to be compatible with any other software in the world, except where that would make his software completely unusable.
You might be amused to check Rick's Rants:
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/
-- School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I also ran this test successfully:
root@biz2tek 11:03pm [~] 3> telnet 127.0.0.1 25 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to 127.0.0.1. Escape character is '^]'. 220 biz2tek.com ESMTP helo lists.biz2tek.com 250 biz2tek.com mail from: <mailman@lists.biz2tek.com> 250 ok rcpt to: <blah@mengland.net> 250 ok data 354 go ahead Subject: testing smtp server
this is just a test. . 250 ok 1116216266 qp 17632 quit 221 biz2tek.com Connection closed by foreign host. root@biz2tek 11:04pm [~] 4>
-Matt
At 5/15/2005 10:49 PM, Matt England wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/4f36b4d2b1cde650bbb41d889c64bc07.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
On Sun, May 15, 2005 at 08:48:51PM -0500, Matt England wrote:
root@biz2tek 8:47pm [...vpopmail/etc] 136> cat /etc/tcp.smtp 127.:allow,RELAYCLIENT=""
Don't you also need to allow relaying from your IP address block?
<http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/qmail-issues.html>
On Sun, May 15, 2005 at 10:49:11PM -0500, Matt England wrote:
Mailman tries to connect to your mail host (DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST in the simplest case, but it is a function of the add_virtualhost() statements in your mm_cfg.py). This is not specified as localhost (or 127.0.0.1)... so this is not a fair test.
-- Jim Tittsler http://www.OnJapan.net/ GPG: 0x01159DB6 Python Starship http://Starship.Python.net/crew/jwt/ Mailman IRC irc://irc.freenode.net/#mailman
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Jim Tittsler wrote:
Are you sure Jim? This is the code in SMTPDirect.py
def __connect(self):
self.__conn = smtplib.SMTP()
self.__conn.connect(mm_cfg.SMTPHOST, mm_cfg.SMTPPORT)
self.__numsessions = mm_cfg.SMTP_MAX_SESSIONS_PER_CONNECTION
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 5/16/2005 10:27 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
It doesn't much matter from what I can tell. I ran the following test, where lists.biz2tek.com is both the email and URL host.
root@biz2tek 11:46am [/etc] 14> telnet lists.biz2tek.com 25 Trying 204.157.9.73... Connected to lists.biz2tek.com. Escape character is '^]'. 220 biz2tek.com ESMTP helo 250 biz2tek.com mail from:<mailman@lists.biz2tek.com> 250 ok rcpt to:<blah@mengland.net> 250 ok data 354 go ahead Subject: test just a test. . 250 ok 1116262038 qp 32097 quit 221 biz2tek.com Connection closed by foreign host. root@biz2tek 11:47am [/etc] 15>
The above failed previously, but I updated /etc/tcp.smtp to relay from lists.biz2tek.com, and now it works...but SMTP based outbound mail still does not work.
I still can get the sendmail-based mechanism (with qmail impersonating sendmail) to work, but the SMTP-based mechanism does not work.
And yes, this does appear to be qmail problem (I'll followup the other notes). And yes, qmail does have a sendmail "drop in" as far as I can tell (I've been using it for months now).
I realize this is a Mailman group, so I may stop with this thread (other then following up a couple other points) given that it appears to be a qmail issue...but any input is appreciated. :)
-Matt
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 10:49 PM -0500 2005-05-15, Matt England wrote:
That sounds like a qmail problem, and you should be using their
mailing lists, FAQs, documentation, etc... to help you resolve the problem. There is likely to be relatively little that we can do to help.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Matt England wrote:
The symptoms you have described do not really arise at the level of Mailman code, even in SMTPDirect.py. If this is not strictly a qmail issue, the problems probably occur in the interface between the Python library and qmail, not in Mailman. Did you update or change Python coincident with the start of these troubles?
In another post, you mentioned using Sendmail.py. I hope you have read and carefully considered all the comments in that module.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 5/16/2005 09:45 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Not that I'm aware of.
Note that phpBB is experiencing similar problems, and it is php based and not python based.
This further points the finger at qmail...or at least both php-to-qmail and python-to-qmail.
Care to offer any suggestions about how I can isolate these php-to-qmail and python-to-qmail problems...with like test scripts? How do I write it, and/or do simple, stand-alone scripts already exist? Can someone write me one?
I realize I'm asking a lot from a Mailman group to help solve an apparent qmail problem...and for what it's worth, I just lobbed as massive email over to the official qmail discussion list (qmail@list.cr.yp.to), too (I had previously been posting to forum.qmailrocks.org).
I'm also in discussion with Brad K. about a switch to postfix.
(Note that another post shows how a 'telnet lists.biz2tek.com 25' outbound email works ok.)
In another post, you mentioned using Sendmail.py. I hope you have read and carefully considered all the comments in that module.
Yes, I did. Sendmail.py is only a temporary solution, possibly only for debugging purposes so that I could prove that Mailman (and outbound email in general) was working.
-Matt
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/746f7519ba02fb0d815e59f305c53fa2.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Matt England wrote:
The following is an example of an interactive python session that sends a message to two recipients in exactly the same way that SMTPDirect.py does. Actual addresses and domains have been munged for privacy, but the session works and causes the message to be sent via the smtp server at 'localhost' via the default port (port = 0 to the connect method says use the default which is 25).
The values assigned to SMTPHOST and SMTPPORT are from Defaults.py. If you find you need to change them in any way to make this work, make the same changes in mm_cfg.py.
msg can be as elaborate as you want. the rcpts list should contain valid recipients - this is the only change required for it to actually send mail.
$ python Python 2.3.3 (#1, May 7 2004, 10:31:40) [GCC 3.3.3 20040412 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.3-7)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
For those who may have been tracking this saga:
My Mailman-SMTP problems stemmed from my non-root system accounts having no ability to resolve localhost to my machines IP address...because there was no non-root read permission set for /etc/hosts. (My 'telnet localhost 25' tests were all previously run from the root account, and as soon as I finally ran it from a non-root account, then the problem root cause finally reared its simple, little, ugly head.)
Yes, this is a terribly disgusting thing to learn that I spent so much blood, sweat, and tears on such a silly system flaw.
-Matt
At 5/16/2005 06:57 PM, Matt England wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 8:48 PM -0500 2005-05-15, Matt England wrote:
At this point, I'm afraid that there are relatively few people
who are going to be able to help you. This may be a purely qmail problem, in which case you'd need to use their mailing lists, FAQs, documentation, etc... to help you resolve the issue.
Or, this may be a problem with interactions between Mailman and
qmail, and there just aren't very many people I know of who are running with this configuration.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 6:20 PM -0500 2005-05-15, Matt England wrote:
Occasional timeouts are not too unusual, if you're on a busy
server. We see them on the python.org mail system, for example.
Outbound email from my /bin/mail command is working ok; I am running a virtual lists domain, however, not sure if that has anything to do with it.
You could be having some reverse DNS problems on the virtual domain.
While I'm hunting down this bug I was wondering if anyone could shed some light on it for me.
From the small amount of information you've provided, it's hard
to say anything more. We'd need more detail, especially including data from the MTA logs to see what it was thinking about those attempts.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
Some more info about my system:
MTA = patches qmail 1.03 Mailman = 2.1.6rc4
At 5/15/2005 06:36 PM, Brad Knowles wrote:
Occasional timeouts are not too unusual, if you're on a busy
server. We see them on the python.org mail system, for example.
That's note the case with my host. There's virtually zero load on it at the moment. It's a test server.
Also fyi: all the inbound email to my list is showing up in my pipermail archive.
I tried that, or at least according to Dave Sill's "The qmail handbook," and not difference in behavior.
I'm using tcpserver with qmail-smtpd, and here's my /etc/tcp.smtp:
root@biz2tek 8:47pm [...vpopmail/etc] 136> cat /etc/tcp.smtp 127.:allow,RELAYCLIENT="" root@biz2tek 8:47pm [...vpopmail/etc] 137>
There's absolutely zero qmail-smtpd log entries (from what I can tell) corresponding to a smtp usage from a localhost process. I'm grasping for air here and I find it rather frustrating.
Is there any way I can isolate the outbound/smtp mailman process/program/module? I've got all my other outbound email mechanisms working, but I'm wading through a mountain of modules in mailman trying to figure out exactly which part is responsible for the outbound mail.
Still digging...any other thoughts/troubleshooting welcome, particularly when trying to isolate the outbound email.
-Matt
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
It seems there's some problem with my SMTP server...I'm just trying to figure out what it is or how I can reproduce it other then keeping to point Mailman or phpBB forums at it (both fail for SMTP localhost connections).
I can run the following test ok:
root@biz2tek 10:35pm [~] 1> telnet localhost 25 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to localhost. Escape character is '^]'. 220 biz2tek.com ESMTP HELO biz2tek.com 250 biz2tek.com HELO lists.biz2tek.com 250 biz2tek.com MAIL FROM: <mailman@lists.biz2tek.com> 250 ok ^H 502 unimplemented (#5.5.1) RCPT TO: <blah@mengland.net> 250 ok ^] telnet> c Connection closed. root@biz2tek 10:41pm [~] 2>
Any other suggestions for testing my localhost SMTP server?
-Matt
At 5/15/2005 09:02 PM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 11:48 PM -0500 2005-05-15, Matt England wrote:
Unfortunately for you, qmail was never designed to be a drop-in
replacement for sendmail. If you want to use qmail, you've got to drink all the djb kool-aid and completely replace everything in your OS for which there is a djb equivalent.
Postfix is the only MTA that I know of that *was* designed to be
a drop-in replacement for sendmail -- at least, as much as is possible. If you want to learn more about postfix, I'll be glad to give you my summary of why it's one of the best MTAs on the planet for use with mailing list servers, as well as point you at plenty of other resources that are likely to be useful to you.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 5/16/2005 09:11 AM, Brad Knowles wrote:
That's not my understanding. I've got /usr/lib/sendmail linked to a qmail gizmo, and it's been working for months now. It says so in the qmail docs.
Is there something I'm missing?
Also, the Sendmail.py-based Mailman stuff appears to be working with no problems for me (other then the warnings from the Mailman developrs not to use it...which is why I'm in this investigation).
-Matt
Yes, this is a viable option. What more can you tell me and/or what references can you give me? I invite you to take conversation "offline" from the list if that's more appropriate?
One curiosity: I'm curious if Postfix can support virtual domains as well as qmail can? (Maybe that's hard to answer if one does not know qmail.) When I first looked at Postfix, the seemingly massive amount of script/config-file setup was completely overwhelming to me...or was that exim I was checking out? There was some specific set of reasons why I chose qmail over Postfix, but I can't remember them. The fact that yahoo.com and smtp.com both seem to be qmail-based systems have a large pull with me, though; I get the impression Postfix hasn't been around the block as long as qmail, but that does not mean that it's not stable.
Did I just start a postfix-vs-qmail rat hole? (That could probably help me, but it may take away from the list.)
-Matt
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/e6ea3e5ffc3558c74e9f8cbf3f38357a.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
At 11:57 AM -0500 2005-05-16, Matt England wrote:
Yes, offline is best.
Did I just start a postfix-vs-qmail rat hole? (That could probably help me, but it may take away from the list.)
Yeah, it's not really a good idea open up that kind of a
flamefest on the list. Best to take it offline.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/334b870d5b26878a79b2dc4cfcc500bc.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
"Matt" == Matt England <mengland@mengland.net> writes:
Matt> That's not my understanding. I've got /usr/lib/sendmail
Matt> linked to a qmail gizmo, and it's been working for months
Matt> now. It says so in the qmail docs.
Matt> Is there something I'm missing?
Dan Bernstein is a very smart guy with a different perspective on many things. This has resulted in him producing a slew of unconventional software. It works well in combination with other Bernstein software, but it is designed to be "excellent software" in Bernstein's opinion, NOT to be compatible with any other software in the world, except where that would make his software completely unusable.
You might be amused to check Rick's Rants:
http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/faq/
-- School of Systems and Information Engineering http://turnbull.sk.tsukuba.ac.jp University of Tsukuba Tennodai 1-1-1 Tsukuba 305-8573 JAPAN Ask not how you can "do" free software business; ask what your business can "do for" free software.
![](https://secure.gravatar.com/avatar/5c84acfd82c6c21cb379d4152e1a0119.jpg?s=120&d=mm&r=g)
I also ran this test successfully:
root@biz2tek 11:03pm [~] 3> telnet 127.0.0.1 25 Trying 127.0.0.1... Connected to 127.0.0.1. Escape character is '^]'. 220 biz2tek.com ESMTP helo lists.biz2tek.com 250 biz2tek.com mail from: <mailman@lists.biz2tek.com> 250 ok rcpt to: <blah@mengland.net> 250 ok data 354 go ahead Subject: testing smtp server
this is just a test. . 250 ok 1116216266 qp 17632 quit 221 biz2tek.com Connection closed by foreign host. root@biz2tek 11:04pm [~] 4>
-Matt
At 5/15/2005 10:49 PM, Matt England wrote:
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On Sun, May 15, 2005 at 08:48:51PM -0500, Matt England wrote:
root@biz2tek 8:47pm [...vpopmail/etc] 136> cat /etc/tcp.smtp 127.:allow,RELAYCLIENT=""
Don't you also need to allow relaying from your IP address block?
<http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-install/qmail-issues.html>
On Sun, May 15, 2005 at 10:49:11PM -0500, Matt England wrote:
Mailman tries to connect to your mail host (DEFAULT_EMAIL_HOST in the simplest case, but it is a function of the add_virtualhost() statements in your mm_cfg.py). This is not specified as localhost (or 127.0.0.1)... so this is not a fair test.
-- Jim Tittsler http://www.OnJapan.net/ GPG: 0x01159DB6 Python Starship http://Starship.Python.net/crew/jwt/ Mailman IRC irc://irc.freenode.net/#mailman
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Jim Tittsler wrote:
Are you sure Jim? This is the code in SMTPDirect.py
def __connect(self):
self.__conn = smtplib.SMTP()
self.__conn.connect(mm_cfg.SMTPHOST, mm_cfg.SMTPPORT)
self.__numsessions = mm_cfg.SMTP_MAX_SESSIONS_PER_CONNECTION
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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At 5/16/2005 10:27 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
It doesn't much matter from what I can tell. I ran the following test, where lists.biz2tek.com is both the email and URL host.
root@biz2tek 11:46am [/etc] 14> telnet lists.biz2tek.com 25 Trying 204.157.9.73... Connected to lists.biz2tek.com. Escape character is '^]'. 220 biz2tek.com ESMTP helo 250 biz2tek.com mail from:<mailman@lists.biz2tek.com> 250 ok rcpt to:<blah@mengland.net> 250 ok data 354 go ahead Subject: test just a test. . 250 ok 1116262038 qp 32097 quit 221 biz2tek.com Connection closed by foreign host. root@biz2tek 11:47am [/etc] 15>
The above failed previously, but I updated /etc/tcp.smtp to relay from lists.biz2tek.com, and now it works...but SMTP based outbound mail still does not work.
I still can get the sendmail-based mechanism (with qmail impersonating sendmail) to work, but the SMTP-based mechanism does not work.
And yes, this does appear to be qmail problem (I'll followup the other notes). And yes, qmail does have a sendmail "drop in" as far as I can tell (I've been using it for months now).
I realize this is a Mailman group, so I may stop with this thread (other then following up a couple other points) given that it appears to be a qmail issue...but any input is appreciated. :)
-Matt
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At 10:49 PM -0500 2005-05-15, Matt England wrote:
That sounds like a qmail problem, and you should be using their
mailing lists, FAQs, documentation, etc... to help you resolve the problem. There is likely to be relatively little that we can do to help.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
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Matt England wrote:
The symptoms you have described do not really arise at the level of Mailman code, even in SMTPDirect.py. If this is not strictly a qmail issue, the problems probably occur in the interface between the Python library and qmail, not in Mailman. Did you update or change Python coincident with the start of these troubles?
In another post, you mentioned using Sendmail.py. I hope you have read and carefully considered all the comments in that module.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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At 5/16/2005 09:45 AM, Mark Sapiro wrote:
Not that I'm aware of.
Note that phpBB is experiencing similar problems, and it is php based and not python based.
This further points the finger at qmail...or at least both php-to-qmail and python-to-qmail.
Care to offer any suggestions about how I can isolate these php-to-qmail and python-to-qmail problems...with like test scripts? How do I write it, and/or do simple, stand-alone scripts already exist? Can someone write me one?
I realize I'm asking a lot from a Mailman group to help solve an apparent qmail problem...and for what it's worth, I just lobbed as massive email over to the official qmail discussion list (qmail@list.cr.yp.to), too (I had previously been posting to forum.qmailrocks.org).
I'm also in discussion with Brad K. about a switch to postfix.
(Note that another post shows how a 'telnet lists.biz2tek.com 25' outbound email works ok.)
In another post, you mentioned using Sendmail.py. I hope you have read and carefully considered all the comments in that module.
Yes, I did. Sendmail.py is only a temporary solution, possibly only for debugging purposes so that I could prove that Mailman (and outbound email in general) was working.
-Matt
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Matt England wrote:
The following is an example of an interactive python session that sends a message to two recipients in exactly the same way that SMTPDirect.py does. Actual addresses and domains have been munged for privacy, but the session works and causes the message to be sent via the smtp server at 'localhost' via the default port (port = 0 to the connect method says use the default which is 25).
The values assigned to SMTPHOST and SMTPPORT are from Defaults.py. If you find you need to change them in any way to make this work, make the same changes in mm_cfg.py.
msg can be as elaborate as you want. the rcpts list should contain valid recipients - this is the only change required for it to actually send mail.
$ python Python 2.3.3 (#1, May 7 2004, 10:31:40) [GCC 3.3.3 20040412 (Red Hat Linux 3.3.3-7)] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
-- Mark Sapiro <msapiro@value.net> The highway is for gamblers, San Francisco Bay Area, California better use your sense - B. Dylan
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For those who may have been tracking this saga:
My Mailman-SMTP problems stemmed from my non-root system accounts having no ability to resolve localhost to my machines IP address...because there was no non-root read permission set for /etc/hosts. (My 'telnet localhost 25' tests were all previously run from the root account, and as soon as I finally ran it from a non-root account, then the problem root cause finally reared its simple, little, ugly head.)
Yes, this is a terribly disgusting thing to learn that I spent so much blood, sweat, and tears on such a silly system flaw.
-Matt
At 5/16/2005 06:57 PM, Matt England wrote:
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At 8:48 PM -0500 2005-05-15, Matt England wrote:
At this point, I'm afraid that there are relatively few people
who are going to be able to help you. This may be a purely qmail problem, in which case you'd need to use their mailing lists, FAQs, documentation, etc... to help you resolve the issue.
Or, this may be a problem with interactions between Mailman and
qmail, and there just aren't very many people I know of who are running with this configuration.
-- Brad Knowles, <brad@stop.mail-abuse.org>
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."
-- Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790), reply of the Pennsylvania
Assembly to the Governor, November 11, 1755
SAGE member since 1995. See <http://www.sage.org/> for more info.
participants (6)
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Brad Knowles
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Jim Tittsler
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John W. Baxter
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Mark Sapiro
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Matt England
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Stephen J. Turnbull