[ale] Please help: BellSouth ADSL hangs with sendmail and up2date

[Chuck Mattern]

I'm in the process of switching from AT&T Broadband to BellSouth ADSL and have
got everything working two glaring exceptions: sendmail and up2date.  Getting 
help with anything Linux from BellSouth is a waste of time so I'm appealing to 
the group.

I've got one of the Alcatel Speed Touch Home units and have tried a number of
Linux based firewalls. I started with a RH6.2/ipchains machine, when I found
that up2date was hanging I tried upgrading to RH7.3/iptables, when this
exhibited the same problem I tried implementing IPCop.  All have the same
problem.  I decided to just cut over and update my machines manually, once I
cut over I found that outbound sendmail is giving me trouble as well.  To
ensure that the problem is not with my Linux configs I put a spare disk in the
OBSD firewall on the AT&T side and installed IPCop with the same patches and
setting as on the BellSouth side, it works flawlessly.  The speed seemed fine
but I tested it just to be sure, on the AT&T side I get 1,431kbps download and
228kbps  and the BellSouth side is about 10% less (I had trouble getting some
of the tests to complete as well).  Both the reading and the problems take
place with an otherwise idle connection.

In both cases the connection is established then stops.  I have some more 
detailed output below, please read on if you can help.  Any thoughts would be 
appreciated.

With up2date the program starts but never pulls up the gui, eventually it fails
with this message:

# up2date
Error communicating with server.  The message was:
EOF
#

While it's running I can see the connection in the output of netstat:

# netstat -a|grep redhat tcp        0   2589 gryphon:43989           xmlrpc.rhn.redhat:https ESTABLISHED
#

And the firewall shows the connection properly masqueraded:

TCP  149:33.40 192.168.1.1          216.148.218.165      43989 (61061) -> 443

In the case of sendmail jobs go into the queue fine but get deferred:

]# sendmail -bp
                /var/spool/mqueue (3 requests)
----Q-ID---- --Size-- -----Q-Time----- ------------Sender/Recipient------------
g6LDinu01736*    4182 Sun Jul 21 09:44 <cmattern at gryphon>
                 (Deferred: Connection reset by mx06.mail.bellsouth.net.)
                                       <xxx at xxx.xxx>
g6LDoY001808     2332 Sun Jul 21 09:50 <cmattern at gryphon>
                 (reply: read error from mx06.mail.bellsouth.net.)
                                       <xxx at xxx.xxx>
g6L5tOu21441     2773 Sun Jul 21 01:55 <cmattern at gryphon>
                 (reply: read error from mx07.mail.bellsouth.net.)
                                       <xxx at xxx.xxx>
#

If I try to run the queue manually here's what I get (FWIW each of the hangs 
depicted below lasts for about 10-15 minutes before losing the connection):

# sendmail -v -q

Running /var/spool/mqueue/g6LDinu01736 (sequence 1 of 3)
g6LDinu01736: locked

Running /var/spool/mqueue/g6LDoY001808 (sequence 2 of 3)
<xxx at xxx.xxx>... Connecting to mx07.mail.bellsouth.net. via relay...
421 imf17bis.bellsouth.net connection refused from [67.33.179.119]
>>> QUIT
<xxx at xxx.xxx>... Connecting to mx04.mail.bellsouth.net. via relay...
<xxx at xxx.xxx>... Closing connection to mx07.mail.bellsouth.net.
220 mail.bellsouth.net ESMTP server (InterMail vM.5.01.04.19 201-253-122-122-119-20020516) ready Sun, 21 Jul 2002 17:20:40 -0400
>>> EHLO gryphon.myth.bellsouth.net
250-imf01bis.bellsouth.net
250-HELP
250-PIPELINING
250-DSN
250-8BITMIME
250 SIZE 10485760
>>> MAIL From:<cmattern at bellsouth.net> SIZE=2348
250 Sender <cmattern at bellsouth.net> and extensions (SIZE=2348) Ok
>>> RCPT To:<xxx at xxx.xxx>
250 Recipient <xxx at xxx.xxx> Ok
>>> DATA
354 Ok Send data ending with <CRLF>.<CRLF>
>>> .
421 imf01bis.bellsouth.net Lost connection to [67.33.179.119]
>>> QUIT
<xxx at xxx.xxx>... Connecting to mx01.mail.bellsouth.net. via relay...
220 mail.bellsouth.net ESMTP server (InterMail vM.5.01.04.19 201-253-122-122-119-20020516) ready Sun, 21 Jul 2002 17:25:41 -0400
>>> EHLO gryphon.myth.bellsouth.net
250-imf09bis.bellsouth.net
250-HELP
250-PIPELINING
250-DSN
250-8BITMIME
250 SIZE 10485760
>>> MAIL From:<cmattern at bellsouth.net> SIZE=2348
250 Sender <cmattern at bellsouth.net> and extensions (SIZE=2348) Ok
>>> RCPT To:<xxx at xxx.xxx>
250 Recipient <xxx at xxx.xxx> Ok
>>> DATA
354 Ok Send data ending with <CRLF>.<CRLF>
>>> .
421 imf09bis.bellsouth.net Lost connection to [67.33.179.119]
>>> QUIT
<xxx at xxx.xxx>... Connecting to mx03.mail.bellsouth.net. via relay...
<xxx at xxx.xxx>... Closing connection to mx04.mail.bellsouth.net.
>>> QUIT
220 mail.bellsouth.net ESMTP server (InterMail vM.5.01.04.19 201-253-122-122-119-20020516) ready Sun, 21 Jul 2002 17:30:41 -0400
>>> EHLO gryphon.myth.bellsouth.net
250-imf05bis.bellsouth.net
250-HELP
250-PIPELINING
250-DSN
250-8BITMIME
250 SIZE 10485760
>>> MAIL From:<cmattern at bellsouth.net> SIZE=2348
250 Sender <cmattern at bellsouth.net> and extensions (SIZE=2348) Ok
>>> RCPT To:<xxx at xxx.xxx>
250 Recipient <xxx at xxx.xxx> Ok
>>> DATA
354 Ok Send data ending with <CRLF>.<CRLF>
>>> .
421 imf05bis.bellsouth.net Lost connection to [67.33.179.119]
>>> QUIT
<xxx at xxx.xxx>... Connecting to mx05.mail.bellsouth.net. via relay...

-- 
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|Chuck Mattern	        | "People often find it easier to be a result |
|camattern at acm.org      | of the past than a cause of the future."    |
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