On Fri, Apr 16, 1999 at 07:20:59PM +0100, Robert Harrison wrote:
> The story:
> ----------
> I've set up a mailserver RH Linux 5.1 running Qmail as my MTA.
>
> The idea being to use OUTLOOK on the PC's to deliver mail to the LINUX
> mailserver. The mailserver then dials-up my ISP and delivers all the
> external e-mail and collects any new mail.
>
>
> Now everything works with one exception.
>
> When I send an external e-mail from OUTLOOK on one of the PC's to the LINUX
> server via SMTP I get a delivery error saying that the user doesn't exist.
> What should happen is that the external mail should be placed in the
> ~alias/pppdir/new and not bounced back.
>
> However when I send internal mail from OUTLOOK it is delivered to the users
> MAILDIR on the server fine.
>
> If I send external email locally from the LINUX mailserver it is delivered
> fine to the ~alias/pppdir/new waiting to be sent out to my ISP on the next
> connection.
>
> So please can some one shine some light as to why when I send external mail
> from OUTLOOK via qmail-smtpd it is returned as undeliverable.
Does it really say that the user doesn't exist? Or does it say the domain isn't
in the list of rcpthosts? Your being able to inject mail locally but not via
qmail-smtpd almost certainly points to a relaying problem. Do you have
selective relaying configured, so that machines on your network can relay?
> PS I start qmail-smtpd from inetd I know it isn't the preferred way of
> doing it but we only have 10 terminal using the mailserver.
>
> When I telnet to port 25 on the server it takes about 1.5 mins before
> connecting. However if a ppp link is up it connects immediately. Any help
> as to why that happens would also be nice.
That's a reverse DNS lookup problem. You can either run local DNS to reverse
map your private IP addresses, or you can configure inetd not to do the reverse
mapping (and I don't know how to do that with inetd).
Chris
