Re: [Exim] Incomming SMTP failure

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Author: Phil Pennock
Date:  
To: Pravinkumar_Shivakumar
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [Exim] Incomming SMTP failure
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On 2001-12-26 at 20:23 +0530, Pravinkumar_Shivakumar wrote:
> I've got a problem in IIS SMTP service/Exim mail server.


Can't help on the first part. Perhaps the second.

> The problem is as follows.
> The appln. is using CDONTS component of IIS server for mailing.


Means very little to me, but thanks for at least including relevant
information; an NT person might be able to make use of this and it's
refreshing to see actual relevant information about the environment. As
a request for help goes, you've just earned a couple of brownie points;
enough to make me bother to reply. :^)

> The smarthost of SMTP service is configured with the hostname of the
> mailserver.
> The mails are not reaching the dealers. The mails are there in the
> Mailroot\Queue directory in IIS server.
> A new file is created with ".rtr" extn. It says the following.
> Connection to "Mail Server Hostname" with IP address "a.b.c.d" failed from "
> IIS Hostname"


Does it not give _any_ information about _why_ the connection failed?

> I'm able to ping the mailserver from IIS server. The mail server is EXIM
> mailing system running on UNIX.


Okay, being able to "ping" the mailserver verifies two things:
 (1) The DNS works sufficiently to be able to identify the host
 (2) There's a network stack on a host with that IP address, which
     responds


What ping does _not_ do is identify whether or not any particular
service is running. So first, try to figure out if Exim is actually
running and accepting connections.

On the Windows box, run "telnet", which should be there somewhere. Even
MicroSoft include a Telnet client (even if it is broken). Tell the
telnet client to connect to the mail-server, on port 25, which is the
SMTP port.

You should be able to make a connection, and get a greeting banner. The
greeting banner is a line starting "220 " and then including information
for humans. On a plain Exim configuration, where you've not changed the
smtp_banner option, this should include the primary_hostname, then
"ESMTP", then "Exim" and a version number and a build date.

If you can't make a connection, then nothing's listening on port 25 and
Exim probably isn't running. If the connection is immediately closed,
then you need to look into what sort of restrictions have been
configured for which hosts can connect. Eg, /etc/hosts.allow
(optionally checked, Exim compile-time option, USE_TCP_WRAPPERS), or
inside the Exim configuration, things like host_reject.

If you can connect and get the banner, then Exim is minimally
functional; not only that, but if this is the case, then the error
message on the Windows box truly is pathetically awful.

If the connection is refused, then Exim isn't running, and you need to
find a local Unix consultant to teach you some basic Unix skills, or
spend time searching the Internet and some of the Unix courses
available.

> So I wanted to know wheather there's any place in Exim that i have to set
> the property saying allow relay mails from the Win/IIS box.


Yes. By default, Exim won't relay. There's an option host_accept_relay
which is fully documented in The Exim Specification. There's an HTML
version on the Exim website (and available via FTP from wherever you got
Exim, probably) and there's a plain text version available as part of
the Exim distribution, in doc/spec.txt.

> Tried a lot on the net for more info,but could'nt find any.


I'm glad that you looked, but surprised that you couldn't find any
information. The two sites you want to familiarise yourself with are:

<http://www.exim.org/>
lots of Exim information, the full documentation, FAQ, etc, and the
mailing-list archives.

<http://www.google.com/>
A search engine. A very good one. You should train yourself to use
google, as an extension of yourself. It shouldn't be second nature,
it should be first nature. "To google" is a verb, for a very good
reason. Embrace Google.

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Does that have _any_ legal value in your country?
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