Re: [exim] sender verify fail

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Author: Phil Pennock
Date:  
To: Ho-Ki Au
CC: exim-users
Subject: Re: [exim] sender verify fail
On 2010-09-08 at 17:36 +0800, Ho-Ki Au wrote:
> I'm trying to set up exim whose hostname is managed by a local dns server.
> Let's say our domain is abc.com and the exim server is running on
> mail.abc.com. When I tried to send mail using alpine on another host in the
> same domain, e.g. client.abc.com and specifying a sender address to be
> hau@???, exim refused to send the mail and log file showed:
>
> 2010-09-08 16:46:31 H=([192.168.1.60]) [192.168.1.60] F=<hau@???>
> rejected RCPT <hoki.au@???>: Sender verify failed
> 2010-09-08 16:47:01 H=([192.168.1.60]) [192.168.1.60] sender verify fail for
> <hau@???>: Unknown user
>
> However, if I changed the sender address to my company email address, e.g.
> hau@???, that exim successfully verified the sender.
> If I dig -t mx abc.com, it returned me the correct (internal) ip address in
> the 192.168.1.0/24 subnet. Could someone tell me what exim was doing when
> it verified the sender address? And how can I get it to send mail from
> hau@???? I do not want to disable require verify = sender


Exim attempts to verify the sender address can be delivered to. If that
involves delivering remotely, then it's likely just that there are DNS
records for the domain which allow delivery; at that point, verification
will stop as the problem has passed out of the local system's authority
to decide.

If the address is in a domain handled locally and Exim handles that
domain locally, then it's highly likely that Exim can determine whether
or not it can deliver to the full address.

$ exim -bt hau@???
will show whether or not Exim thinks it can do something with an
address. You can use:
$ exim -d+verify -bt hau@???
to get more debugging information, with added debug data for
verification.

-Phil