[ale] Bellsouth vs. sendmail "smart host"

[Jay Finch]

Possible reason: They're using load balancing between 2 different outgoing
mail servers.  ANd the 2 servers have different settings?

Not sure if this would be the problem or not, but that's what it sounds
like from a purely abstract POV.  Now the question arises: Do you alert
the Bellsouth NOC of this potential inconsistency, or change the Smarthost
to reflect the single server that does allow you to relay?

It sounds like they replaced one of their outgoing mailservers and fubared
it a bit.  But again, this is purely from an abstract POV.

YMMV.  NVIAL.  SORMA.  ;~)

Cheers!
Jay

PS - Acronymanonymous...
YMMV = Your Mileage May Vary.
NVIAL = Not valid in all locations.
SORMA = Some other requirements may apply.

> All,
>
> Some time saturday afternoon, my outgoing mail stopped working.  I'm
> running sendmail 8.11.6 (stock redhat 7.3) configured with
> mail.bellsouth.net as the "DS" smart host.  This has worked for months
> without any problems, but suddenly on saturday, Bellsouth started
> rejecting my attempt to relay:
>
> | 550 .net 022: Your current IP address is not allowed to relay to foo.com
> Solution: Connect using BellSouth Internet Service.
>
> Replace any domain we try to send mail to for foo.com
>
> If I try the same from Outlook on a winders box, it works ok, so I think
> the msg is misleading (i.e. it's not mapping our _IP_ to a
> rejected-relay list).
>
> I've debugged by telnet'ing to port 25 at mail.bellsouth.com.  I can
> send mail by hand like that all day.  Looking at "mail -v" output, I see
> that it claims to be using mx00.mail.bellsouth.net -- NOT
> mail.bellsouth.net as is specified in sendmail.cf.
>
> | [root at gromit etc]# mail -v foo at foo.com
> | Subject:
> | Cc:
> | ^D
> | foo at foo.com... Connecting to mx00.mail.bellsouth.net. via relay...
> | 220 mail.bellsouth.net ESMTP server (InterMail vM.5.01.05.27
> 201-253-122-126-127-20021220) ready Sat, 28 Jun 2003 20:11:08 -0400
>
> If I telnet to mx01.mail.bellsouth.net, I can reproduce the errors!
>
> Aha!  I'm talking to the wrong relay server.
>
> But!?
>
> Why is sendmail using mx00 (or sometimes mx01) instead of
> mail.bellsouth.net as we've specified in sendmail.cf.  dig shows mx00
> and mx01 as the MX records for the bellsouth.net domain.  But why the
> heck would sendmail be using MX records for a relay?  I checked
> reverse-ip's and you can't get mx00 from mail.bellsouth.net or vice
> versa by resolving reverse ip's.
>
> I've grep'd everything under /etc and the only line containing the
> string bellsouth is the DSmail.bellsouth.net line in /etc/sendmail.cf.
>
> I'm stumped.
>
> Here's the snippet that corresponds to a failed attempt to mail to
> tynor at foo.com with DS set to "mail.bellsouth.net".  I have no idea were
> those two IP addresses come from (192.* and 172.*).  I don't see those
> in the bellsouth.net zone info from dig.  I don't use the 192.* or 172.*
> subnets internally (our internal green net is 10.*):
>
> Jun 29 09:48:57 gromit sendmail[30219]: gethostbyaddr(192.168.127.1)
> failed: 1
> Jun 29 09:48:57 gromit sendmail[30219]: gethostbyaddr(172.16.76.1) failed:
> 1
> Jun 29 09:48:57 gromit sendmail[30219]: h5TDmvb30219: from=tynor, size=48,
> class=0, nrcpts=1, msgid=<200306291348.h5TDmvb30219 at gromit.iintiip.com>,
> relay=tynor at localhost
> Jun 29 09:48:57 gromit sendmail[30219]: h5TDmvb30219: to=tynor at foo.com,
> ctladdr=tynor (501/100), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=relay,
> pri=30048, relay=mx00.mail.bellsouth.net. [205.152.59.32], dsn=5.1.1,
> stat=User unknown
>
>
> I've googled, and searched the Ale archives to no avail.  The Bellsouth
> support folk refuse to consider this their problem since it works OK
> from M$ Outlook.  Thanks for any help!
>
> Steve
> steve at iintiip.com
> http://www.iintiip.com/surplus
>
> _______________________________________________
> Ale mailing list
> Ale at ale.org
> http://www.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>
>

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