Re: Mail refusing to leave my machine
Hi,
On Fri, Oct 15, 1999 at 07:11:57PM +0100, Anthony Campbell wrote:
> On 15 Oct 1999, Dave Baker wrote:
> >
>
> Many thanks for this reply. I certainly need some help with this;
> tearing out my hair in handfulls!
>
> > Hi Anthony,
> > I'm guessing somewhat here, since I've only used sendmail and exim, so
> > smail might work differently.
> >
> > Here are a few comments that might help you in the right direction:
> >
> > - your /etc/resolv.conf looks broken - I don't think you can have more
> > than 3 nameserver lines (or if you do, the rest are ignored). do you have
> > a mechanism to replace this depending on what service you dial? I have
> > scripts that run from /etc/ppp/ip-up.d and ip-down.d that change my
> > resolv.conf depending on the network state ...
> >
IFAIK you can have as many nameservers in there as you want but only the first 3 will be used because they are used from first to last and the timeout backs off in such a manner that it will fail if the third server doesn't reply.
Your underlying problem probably lies in the fact that you are calling two ISP's but your configuration doesn't reflect this - so at least 50% of the time some of your settings are more applicable for the other ISP.
Normally when you dial an ISP you resolve from their DNS server, because it is closest to you it makes sense to do so. However, there is no requirement to do so and because queries are made using UDP it is difficult for ISP's to stop you resolving from them even if you are not connected through them. Hence, I'd suggest that you put two nameservers in, one from each ISP, and then don't change the config. Long term you could write a script to edit your resolv.conf and using a caching name server might help.
Mail is a different matter because the ISP can effectively stop you relaying through them to another location on the Net if you are not on one of their IP's: in fact they need to do so to stop spammers. So if you are using the ISP's smarthost to dekiver your outgoing mail to for further transit then at least half of the time you won't be able to deliver through it - it will refuse your mail because you're not on one of it's IP's. Only solution would be to use a script to change the smarthost config and restart the mailserver - nasty. So, in your case it may be better to deliver directly, which may be what your doing......the timeout you are receiving could be a result of this if it cannot reach the mailserver at the other end.
I did write some stuff here about checking freeserves DNS and mailservers but having had a quick look at their setup it does seem a little strange shall we say. Perhaps I'm tired. I guess as someone who works in an ISP I show my own bias here by remarking that you get what you pay for, a rule that also applies to ISP accounts ;-)
If I was you I'd rerun smailconfig and set it to deliver directly with defaulting to a smarthost on failure. It's really not ideal but will probably work more-often than not - writing the scripts is probably the longterm answer.
Hope this is of some use,
Steve
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