[H-GEN] Vanishing Email.

[Martin Pool]

On Mon, Sep 25, 2000 at 09:54:39PM +1000, Stephen Thorne wrote:

> > Ben Fowler <fowlerb at optushome.com.au> (22 Sep 2000 10:46 +1000):
> > > My system (reptile) is sitting behind a masqerading firewall.  I've got
> > > sendmail configured to use a smarthost (the abovementioned mail machine),
> > > so when I send mail from mutt, mail _should_ be getting to where it's
> > > supposed to.
> > > 
> > > However, it's not happing that way.  I can send mail to Hotmail, and it
> > > arrives OK, however mail addressed to anywhere at QUT and many other places
> > > disappears into the wide blue yonder, never to be seen again.

I'd try good old smtp-by-hand to see what happens.


> I've had emails go to the big bitbucket in the sky before.
> 
> This is what was happening to me:
> 
> my hostname, theseus.merlon.com.au, recieving mail from mail.merlon.com.au
> my email address, steve at merlon.com.au.
> 
> Emails being fetched using fetchmail.
> 
> Emails went to /var/spool/mail/steve
> 
> Emails sent to anywhere worked, except my emails sent to work...
> 
> I discovered that becuase my hostname was *merlon.com.au my email
> was being sent to localhost, and since no user by the name of 
> "sandra" or "jon" (my secretary and boss) existed, the emails
> got bounced, silently.

Under postfix, you might use the $luser_relay option.  (Really.)

-- 
Martin Pool, Linuxcare, Inc.
+61 2 6262 8990
mbp at linuxcare.com, http://www.linuxcare.com/
Linuxcare. Support for the revolution.
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