[Mailman-Users] Message failures - solved

[Daniel D Jones]

On Friday 22 June 2007 22:22, Daniel D Jones wrote:
> I'm having an issue with Mailman being unable to send messages through
> qmail. I'm not sure which one has the problem, so I'm sending to both
> lists.  As soon as I figure out which program is at fault, I'll remove the
> other list from any replies.
>
> I'm running a Debian server with Mailman and qmail.  We recent had a brief
> power outage.  I shut the server down, then rebooted.  When it came back
> up, I'd stopped receiving mail.   I troubleshot and found out that
> something I'd installed on the server had evidently installed qpopper as a
> dependency.  It was binding to port 110 before qmail's pop3d, so pop3d
> obviously wasn't working.  I uninstalled qpopper and thought that I had
> everything fixed. However, either mailman is not working correctly or qmail
> isn't allowing mailman to work.
>
> Messages are coming into the list.  I receive the messages in my mailbox,
> located on the same server.  (Both my address and the list address are
> @riddlemaster.org addresses.)  However, none of the other list members are
> receiving mail.  Checking the mailman/post logs, I see a great deal of
> this:
>
> Jun 22 17:42:59 2007 (2503) post to listname from rvh40 at xxxxx.com,
> size=3715, message-id=<6019BB4F-A03B-4CD3-93BF-1B58FD917B49 at xxxxx.com>, 16
> failures Jun 22 20:22:59 2007 (2503) post to listname from rex at yyyyy.com,
> size=1920, message-id=<20070623002827.GI4853 at yyyyy.com>, 16 failures
> Jun 22 21:15:55 2007 (13367) post to listname from
> ddjones at riddlemaster.org, size=1481,
> message-id=<200706222124.18534.ddjones at riddlemaster.org>, 16 failures
>
> (List members email addresses obscured.)  There are 17 addresses subbed to
> the list, including mine.  So it appears that my email address is
> succeeding but all of the rest are failing.  I don't find any errors or
> related entries in any of the qmail logs.
>
> I can email members of the list directly, using qmail on the same server
> that hosts mailman.  So mail is flowing through the system, both in and
> out.  For some reason, however, it appears that mailman can't send messages
> outside my domain.  Any hints or suggestions on how to troubleshoot this
> issue would be greatly appreciated.

Follow up with the resolution for the sake of anyone searching the archives at 
a later date.

The issue turned out to be with qmail, not mailman.  I had the following line 
in my tcp.smtp.cdb file:

127:allow,RELAYCLIENT=""

The correct line is:

127.:allow,RELAYCLIENT=""

Notice the period after the 127.  It tells qmail that the 127 is a wildcard.  
Without the period, it's taken as an exact match.  This prevented any mail 
generated on the server from being sent outside the domain, but allowed mail 
coming from another authorized relay IP to get through.