I am getting a recurring, off-and-on odd behavior when one of my
users attempts to send email to sherwin.com (sherwin-williams the
paint people), for all addresses within that domain.
My other mailservers (exim and a proprietary piece of work, old BBS
software from eSoft) *will* send mail to that domain, no problem,
even on days when qmail will not.
Here is what I have so far...
The error message from the logs...(no, it isn't really a win95 box)
Nov 2 14:05:30 win95 qmail: 973191930.503701 delivery
628273: deferral: Sorry,_I_wasn't_able_to_establish_an
_SMTP_connection._(#4.4.1)/
My mail server is able to get a valid DNS entry for the sherwin.com
mail server. It's not a dns or MX record problem.
As well, port 25 on mail01.sherwin.com (the best MX record) is alive
and well, for when I telnet to the box on port 25, I get the
following message (all one line, no spaces in the ***'s part until
after 2000).
220
********************************************************0*********
*********2*****2000 ****2*****0*00
It says 220 (space) 75 continual characters (space) some more
asterisks, and whatnot. The first space is after 220. The second
space is after 2000. It is all ONE LINE of stuff on my ssh screen.
If I type in things (HELO and like that) it talks back to me with
appropriate looking replies. I'm not an expert, but it does what the
821 rfc sample "conversations" say it is supposed to do.
Their DNS isn't bad. Their MX record isn't hosed. The box and the
port are alive and well. I can reach them without network problems,
from the exact box that is giving me the 4.4.1 message. It is none
of those things.
Okay. I would say that this is likely a qmail oddity, due to the
fact that my other mail servers are perfectly able to send mail to
the domain.
However, since I DO NOT get this error with any other domain besides
this one, I am curious to know why it is happening. Also, folks
at sherwin.com claim I'm an idiot and blame me. *sigh*
My current theory is that the server at mail01.sherwin.com is
sending a 'greeting' that is too long. This is because it works
sometimes and not other times.
I think qmail is barfing on this 70+ character string and causing
my user to tell me that my server is broken, which I don't believe it
is. The other several thousand messages a day it handles go through
just fine, only the ones to sherwin.com die.
Apparently, the mail server's response is not ALWAYS
too long because SOMETIMES my server will send mail to
sherwin.com without a hassle. Looks like part of the 75 chars is a
date. The 2 and 2000 are probably the day and the year. Maybe it
also contains something like a system message of the day, I don't
know.
A bounced mail header gives the following informative lines:
Received: from mail01.sherwin.com (HELO ehub1.sherwin.com)
(148.141.15.156)
Received: from cbdserv4.sherwin.com ([148.141.17.249])
by ehub1.sherwin.com (Lotus Domino Release 5.0.3)
So then. This mail server which is providing excessive
amounts of asterisks in its 220 greeting for connection
establishment is a Lotus Domino 5.0.3, known internally as
ehub1.sherwin.com and externally as mail01.sherwin.com ...
ehub1.sherwin.com does not resolve for me in DNS, so I'd say it
was an internal network name, not a public one.
I'm not sure Lotus would make their server spit out a
bucket of asterisks in its smtp conversations, at least not in the
'out of the box' configuration. I think that's a user-defined
variable...I know it is in some of my mail servers.
I have temporarily remedied the problem on my end by providing the
user with a substantially less-fussy (and less STABLE...) mail
server, but this does not solve the problem permanently.
Any thoughts ya'll have on the subject would be appreciated.
Am I right, am I wrong, am I out of my mind? Is it something else
entirely?
The fine folks at sherwin.com claim I am the ONLY ISP on
the planet who has trouble with this, that it simply MUST be on my
end. And really, with the two other mail servers that I run, I don't
have trouble sending email to sherwin.com...so their argument has
some validity.
I'd like some more thoughts on what is going wrong, because I
feel like an idiot, here.
Jessica U. Gothie -- admin., bedford.net
