[H-GEN] Mail Mysteries

[Rick Phillips]

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What have I done?  I posted the following message on Tuesday and everyone
has left the scene - there have been no posts for a day or so.

Is qmail really that bad? ;>)

Rick

----

I have to set the scene for this.

We run our own mail server - qmail with vpopmail and ezmlm-IDX.  The mail
server is a Mandrake box sitting on a local network behind a Red Hat
Satellite Gateway/Firewall.  The Red Hat box is closed and managed by the
ISP (not Telstra) who supplies the service.  There is only limited
interaction on the latter (for us) in so far as port forwarding is concerned
(25, 110, 80, 443).

We have some friends using the mail server as a mail host.

The strangeness is this - with the SMTP direction set to the Postfix SMTP
server on the satellite gateway, mail with external addresses gets delivered
OK.  Mail for "internal" addresses we own or those who share the server
become "vapour" - no error/warning messages - no delivery.

If I change the SMTP server to point to our own mail server (qmail), mail
sent to the "internal" addresses gets delivered.  Mail destined for external
addresses returns something like -

Your message did not reach some or all of the intended recipients.

      Subject:	WHFC Generating Empty Faxes
      Sent:	26/11/2002 4:26 PM

The following recipient(s) could not be reached:

      'uli.e at gmx.de' on 26/11/2002 4:26 PM
            No transport provider was available for delivery to this
recipient.

In hosts allow, I have placed a line covering our internal network
192.168.2. (with the dot on the end) as this covers our current issue of
internal static IP's.

Could someone tell my why this behaviour.  It is more than likely something
I have missed in the permissions as this seems to be a relay prevention
going on.  If this is the case, why doesn't the entry in hosts.allow work?

Regards,

Rick Phillips



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