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Re: Exim4 behaviour when long term failure of outgoing address



Alan Chandler <alan@chandlerfamily.org.uk> writes:

> I'll try and be more specific
>
> The domain in question is virginiaparkinson.com and I am having


,---- [  dig -t mx virginiaparkinson.com ]
| 
| ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> -t mx virginiaparkinson.com
| ;; global options: +cmd
| ;; Got answer:
| ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 54135
| ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2
| 
| ;; QUESTION SECTION:
| ;virginiaparkinson.com.		IN	MX
| 
| ;; ANSWER SECTION:
| virginiaparkinson.com.	86311	IN	MX	10 mail2.virginiaparkinson.com.
| virginiaparkinson.com.	86311	IN	MX	0 mail.virginiaparkinson.com.
| 
| ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
| virginiaparkinson.com.	86284	IN	NS	ns4.ukdnsservers.co.uk.
| virginiaparkinson.com.	86284	IN	NS	ns3.ukdnsservers.co.uk.
| 
| ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
| mail.virginiaparkinson.com. 86311 IN	A	72.1.201.138
| mail2.virginiaparkinson.com. 86311 IN	A	72.1.201.138
| 
| ;; Query time: 0 msec
| ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
| ;; WHEN: Wed Oct 10 16:36:53 2012
| ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 168
`----


> particular difficulty with the domain name hosting company to get
> e-mail forwarding working with them.
>
> The virtual machine is a standard squeeze setup with my
> update-exim4.conf.conf

As suggested before, copy over the example configuration and adjust to
your needs.  The splitfile stuff doesn't give you a readable exim
configuration.

> (77.96.120.60 is my home ip address where my main mail server sits - 
> because this is effectively a dynamic ip address I have to route all
> outgoing mail through a remote smtp server.  Normally I use my ISPs
> mail server, but occassionally it becomes slow, or is blacklisted -
> and this allows me to rapidly switch to this machine to route outgoing
> mail through)

So how do you get incoming mail?  The MX records tell MTAs to hand it
over to 72.1.201.138 rather than 77.96.120.60.

> /etc/aliases has
>
> root: alan.chandler@hartley-consultants.com


,---- [ dig -t mx hartley-consultants.com ]
| 
| ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> -t mx hartley-consultants.com
| ;; global options: +cmd
| ;; Got answer:
| ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 18241
| ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 0
| 
| ;; QUESTION SECTION:
| ;hartley-consultants.com.	IN	MX
| 
| ;; ANSWER SECTION:
| hartley-consultants.com. 86400	IN	MX	0 chandlerfamily.org.uk.
| hartley-consultants.com. 86400	IN	MX	10 chandlerfamily.org.uk.
| 
| ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
| hartley-consultants.com. 86400	IN	NS	ns4.ukdnsservers.co.uk.
| hartley-consultants.com. 86400	IN	NS	ns3.ukdnsservers.co.uk.
| 
| ;; Query time: 221 msec
| ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
| ;; WHEN: Wed Oct 10 16:42:37 2012
| ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 146
`----

,---- [ dig -t a chandlerfamily.org.uk
| 
| ; <<>> DiG 9.8.1-P1 <<>> -t a chandlerfamily.org.uk
| ;; global options: +cmd
| ;; Got answer:
| ;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 30086
| ;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2
| 
| ;; QUESTION SECTION:
| ;chandlerfamily.org.uk.		IN	A
| 
| ;; ANSWER SECTION:
| chandlerfamily.org.uk.	86358	IN	A	77.96.120.60
| 
| ;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
| chandlerfamily.org.uk.	86358	IN	NS	ns1.ukdnsservers.co.uk.
| chandlerfamily.org.uk.	86358	IN	NS	ns2.ukdnsservers.co.uk.
| 
| ;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
| ns1.ukdnsservers.co.uk.	86358	IN	A	72.1.201.150
| ns2.ukdnsservers.co.uk.	86358	IN	A	72.1.216.98
| 
| ;; Query time: 0 msec
| ;; SERVER: 127.0.0.1#53(127.0.0.1)
| ;; WHEN: Wed Oct 10 16:45:23 2012
| ;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 139
`----

> the virtual machines ip address is 80.68.94.252
>
> and both hartley-consultants.com and virginiaparkinson.com have this
> domain referencing 80.68.94.252 BUT their MX records both point else
> where.

The above dig results is what my MTA would get.  I think I already
suggested that you probably have some DNS issues involved?

>  In fact hartley-consultants MX record points to 77.96.120.60,
> whereas virginiaparkinson.com mx records point somewhere completely
> different

To where are they supposed to point to?

You'd be best off getting a static IP address and the corresponding MX
entries so you can receive incoming mail.  If you manage to get MX
entries for a dynamic IP, you can get away with using a smarthost for
the outgoing mail.  That has the disadvantage that when your IP changes,
MTAs may try to hand over mail to the old IP address until they become
aware that the MX entry has changed.  Whoever receives that IP address
will be able to receive your mail then.

You can use fetchmail instead.  Unfortunately, that has some significant
disadvantages.

> (at first trial at what seems a non existant mail server
> that was refusing connections) I am trying to fix that now.


,----
| lee@yun:~$ telnet 72.1.201.138 smtp
| Trying 72.1.201.138...
| Connected to 72.1.201.138.
| Escape character is '^]'.
| 220 mx4.freeparking.co.uk MX ESMTP Exim 4.69
| quit
| 221 mx4.freeparking.co.uk closing connection
| Connection closed by foreign host.
| lee@yun:~$ 
`----


At least there's an MTA answering now (with a seemingly interesting
HELO).

What are you actually trying to achieve?


-- 
Debian testing iad96 brokenarch


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