Re: [Exim] New user/MLM issues

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Author: Philip Hazel
Date:  
To: davidturetsky
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] New user/MLM issues
On Sun, 13 Aug 2000, davidturetsky wrote:

> Here is config file, stripped of most comments, followed by -d9 output of
> direct exim mail attempt:


[Would have been better sending all that to me rather than to the list,
but my response may be of general interest as to how to interpret the
debugging info.]

> Exim version 2.05 debug level 9 uid=0 gid=0


Aarrgghh!! That is an *ancient* version of Exim. The current release is
3.16.

> probably Berkeley DB version 1.8x (native mode)


That is also an ancient version of Berkeley DB. No longer maintained.
Even release 2 is going out of maintenance within a year, I believe, as
the current release is 3.x.

> rewrite_one_header: type=F:
> From: richSOB.com


You supplied a From: header containing a local part with no domain. Exim
is going to try to add a domain.

> newlen=19 newtype=F newtext:
> From: richSOB.com@


Hmm. It ended up with an empty domain. Oh dear! You set

qualify_domain =

in your configuration file. That's the mistake that caused this. You
*must* have some domain defined there if you are going to use local parts
that don't have domains, so that Exim can add it to them and make a
proper, fully-qualified address. The value of qualify domain should be
the domain (not host name) you want to add. Within Exim (and the
Internet), all mail addresses have both a local part and a domain.

> routed by smarthost router:
> deliver to davidturetsky@???
> transport: remote_smtp
> host smtp.email.msn.com [207.46.181.11]


OK, that's where it is going to send the message.

> Connecting to smtp.email.msn.com [207.46.181.11] ... connected


OK, here we go with the SMTP dialogue:

> SMTP response timeout = 300
> SMTP<< 220-email.msn.com Microsoft SMTP MAIL ready at Sun, 13 Aug 2000
> 10:03:19 -0700
> 220 ESMTP spoken here
> SMTP>> EHLO debian


That should send the name of your host. I doubt that it is "debian".
This is a minor error, and does not stop the SMTP session continuing.

> SMTP response timeout = 300
> SMTP<< 250-email.msn.com Hello [63.24.127.7]
> 250-PIPELINING
> 250-SIZE 3145728
> 250 8bitmime
> use_size=1
> SMTP>> MAIL FROM:<root@> SIZE=1389


This is your problem. Same problem as before. The sender of the message
is "root@" because of your bad qualify domain.

> SMTP response timeout = 300
> SMTP<< 501 Invalid Address


The remote server doesn't like this because it is syntactically invalid.
So it has sent an error "Invalid Address" in the SMTP dialogue. Note the
501 error code.

> LOG: 0 MAIN
> ** davidturetsky@??? R=smarthost T=remote_smtp: SMTP error from remote
> mailer after MAIL FROM: <root@> SIZE=1389: host smtp.email.msn.com
> [207.46.181.11]: 501 Invalid Address


Exim has written this error to its log file, where you could have found
it earlier without having to do all this debugging. It is as it says:
"SMTP error from remote mailer", and it tells you exactly what the
problem is.

> sending error message to: root@


Since the message failed, Exim is trying to bounce it back to the
sender, but this isn't going to work, because the sender is invalid.

> Data file written for message 13O2A6-00003j-00
> *** No recipients
> *** Bad address(es)
> root@: domain missing or malformed
> LOG: 0 MAIN
> Error while handling error message: at least one malformed recipient
> address: root@ - domain missing or malformed


There you go. It's all in the log again: "domain missing or malformed".

The first think you must do is sort out what qualify_domain should be
set to. I imagine it should be the domain that your server expects you
to use.

I think your missing background material is "SMTP and How Internet Mail
Works", a document that, as far as I know, does not exist as a
publication. However, you might find the find the information at

ftp://koobera.math.uic.edu/www/im.html

of interest in this regard.

-- 
Philip Hazel            University of Cambridge Computing Service,
ph10@???      Cambridge, England. Phone: +44 1223 334714.