RE: [Exim] Re: FW: Mail delivery failed

> I thought you were talking about sending mail, not receiving??

Sending. Bounces being generated by Exim are getting stuck in the queue and
causing a mail loop due to the 0.0.0.0

> I don't believe it is Exim, see below. I did -
>
> exim -d -bt postmaster@???
>
> and got debug result below, then a test mail which failed immediately.
> The relevant (and correct) reply back from Exim was "all relevant MX
> records point to non-existent hosts" because when Exim asks the SOA
> responsible for the domain - zoneedit.com - for the MX zoneedit gives
> the names *but not the A records*. So Exim says correctly (well my
> Exim does)..."all relevant MX records point to non-existent hosts" and
> stops delivery immediately.

Exim 3.36 doesn't stop delivery immediately. Rather, it is freezing the
message in the queue or causing some sort of strange mail loop. I've actually
gotten into the habit of about once a day using a script to purge all mail in
the outgoing queue from <> because if it's been in there for more than 24
hours, it's most likely never going to be delivered, and I don't care to see a
pointless error message about it addressed to the postmaster.

> If Zoneedit says the statement above I would say that they "should be
> able to recognise that they are badly managing the domain DNS records
> and get out of the business".

They own the domain name, but the original company went out of business, so
they just emptied out the DNS records.

> When you do digs for records like MX's you should first find the SOA
> nameserver then query that server for the relevant information. As the
> start of authority it is the final word.

> So there are two problems here:
> 1) Why your Exim installation doesn't fail the message immediately and
> 2) The fact that Zoneedit are cowboys. Since we started this
> discussion they have changed the MX records from mediaone.actwin.com
> to mail.mediaone.com but they *still* haven't added the A records for
> the host.

1) my Exim installation doesn't fail the messages immediately because my 3.36
didn't set up to do so automagically.

2) ZoneEdit are idiots. :)


> Not clear on why 1 is happening, the original message was a bounce. Do
> you have alias for postmaster to a real account on your system? What
> does your dnsrouter router section in Exim configure file say?

Yes, postmaster goes to me.

There is no dnsrouter as far as I can see in my /etc/exim.conf

> And finally - my favourite comment :-) I see you are using Exim 3.x is
> there any reason why you cannot upgrade. Exim 4 really has many new
> features.

because I want a printed manual to Exim 4 before I even attempt an upgrade,
Other than minor annoyances like this Exim 3.36 works, and I run a system that
can't stand to have the SMTP be crashing due to a misconfigured mailer. So
I'll wait until I can afford the manual as it's got quite a nice price tag on
it. (if it's out yet) ;-)