[Mailman-Users] List Distribution Sequence Confusion

[Mark Sapiro]

Dennis Putnam wrote:
>
>I am having a problem when mailman (2.1.9) tries to distribute mail. My
>main problem is that I do not understand what it is doing. I do not have
>a static IP and I have to relay outgoing mail through my ISP's server.
>Thus there was a lot of fudging of the configuration to make it work
>thanks to help from this list. When I try to send mail to a list it
>seems to be trying to mail it to listname-bounces at fakehost.mydomain.com.


Mailman is not sending mail to that address (SMTP RCPT TO). Mailman is
sending mail with an envelope from that address (SMTP MAIL FROM). This
is so bounced mail will be returned to that address for automated
bounce processing.

>As result I get this this message from my ISP's server, not unexpectedly:
>
>550 [PERMFAIL] destination not valid within DNS (in reply to RCPT TO
>command))


We need more detail. What is the failing address?. are you saying that
"fakehost" is the problem? If that is not in the list's host_name
attribute, it is being added outside of Mailman.

Is Mailman delivering directly to the ISPs MTA (SMTPHOST in mm_cfg.py)
or is it delivering to a local MTA which is relaying to the ISP's MTA.

It is possible that the ISP requires a valid domain in the MAIL FROM
address and doesn't complain until the RCPT TO.

If your Python is 2.4 or later, see the FAQ at
<http://wiki.list.org/x/-IA9> for a way to enable low level SMTP
debugging and see the actual SMTP messages in Mailman's error log.

-- 
Mark Sapiro <mark at msapiro.net>        The highway is for gamblers,
San Francisco Bay Area, California    better use your sense - B. Dylan