Sendmail...sometimes

[Tyr-7BE]

I just got sendmail hooked up on my box, and I can send mail from my address to my hotmail inbox, which is good. The problem is when I attempt to send mail to sourceforge mailing lists.
See, I'm on a few sourceforge lists, and people tend to whine when they get html in their messages, and it all comes as an attachement...such is the microsoft way: make it pretty, and who cares about anyone who's not one of us. When I send mail to something-something@lists.sourceforge.net, I get this message back:

Returned mail: service unavailable
blah blah blah
from: conor@localhost
blah blah blah
Diagnostic code: SMTP; 550 rejected: cannot route to sender.

This doesn't seem like the kind of thing that's gonna go away, and I really have no idea how mailers work. Any idea what's happening here and how can I send to my lists?

[Tyr-7BE]

boing

[PLBlaze]

It will not work unless you tell sendmail that you have host name foo.bar,because it cannot resolve localhost (127.0.0.1).Remember localhost is for internal use only (lo interface)...

Edit your /etc/mail/sendmail.cf file and look for a line that begins with D$jw i belive and change localhost to whatever alias you have for your box or give it a domain name that you use (mail.foo.bar),restart the daemon and try again.Hope this helps.

[Tyr-7BE]

Still happens...and I changed the line to read D$jw.debian.fixxxer. Is that the correct syntax?

It returns: "The original message was received from conor@localhost" (paraphrased).
...while talking to mail.sourceforge.net.:
>>>RCPT To: blahblahblah@lists.sourceforge.net
<<<550 cannot route to sender address <conor@debian.fixxxer>
550 blahblahblah@lists.sourceforge.net... User unknown.

Do you guys need some of my sendmail.cf? If so just tell me which part. I'd really like this mailer to work, as I'm sick of using hotmail for everything.
Also, can I make it so that people can send mail directly to my box? I don't have a POP3 account or anything like that, and I'd like to have mail sent right to my machine.

[bdl]

Drop sendmail and try exim or postfix. You'll thank me.

[Tyr-7BE]

I tried dropping sendmail for exim. Still same old error message, leading me to believe this is non-mailer related. Told me it couldn't route to conor@debian.fixxxer, with that 550 thing. Any help?

[PLBlaze]

I would not hurt if we see maybe first 50 lines from top of sendmail.cf.Is your domain ending in .com,net or else?

Do you have your user (conor) in /etc/mail/aliases or /etc/aliases file? Make sure to run newaliases, which needs to be run after editing the said file or sendmail will complain.

Is your host connected directly to the net or sendmail runs from behing firewall or other box on your lan?

Have you looked at the faq u from sendmail's (http://www.sendmail.org) page?Again hope this helps.

[ 08 March 2001: Message edited by: PLBlaze ]

[Tyr-7BE]

I switched it over to exim, then to postfix...none of them worked...they all gave me the same error. PLBlaze...thank you for the suggestions. How do I add an alias to the file for a normal user? Right now I have webmaster: root, and that's it. Remember, I'm now using postfix. I'm also running a software firewall called easychains, which basically uses ipchains to make my ports invisible against random scanning. Thanks for the help so far guys!
Here's what I know about mailing and about my connection: I'm on bell sympatico adsl which uses pppoe. When I installed debian, I left the group name as default (debian), and I called the terminal Fixxxer. What I'd like to know is why I can send to my hotmail account without problem, but mail.sourceforge.net gives me the 550 error, that it can't route to sender conor@debian.fixxxer. I'd also like to know whether or not it's possible to receive email (eg, I type email "test" in hotmail, address it to conor@somethingaboutdebianandfixxxer, and it shows up when I run mutt). I appreciate all this help, especially for a networking dummy like me :)

[PLBlaze]

To add an alias edit the aliases file and use this syntax:

alias: username

This is what mine looks like:

plblaze: paul (my user name is paul and if someone send mail to plblaze it will be delivered to paul otherwise MTA would complain that user was not found and refuse to accept the mail for delivery)

You seem to have a problem with your host name(s),for this to work you must have a FQDN
such as yourown.com or .net or the host that sends mail to you will not be able to resolve it because it is not registered in any DNS accros intenet.

If you'd like check www.dyndns.org (http://www.dyndns.org) for some more info about dynamic DNS.Hope this helps yet again.

Edit:

Forgot to add that you must have /var/spool/mail/'username' where all the mail comes to (sendmail should create it for you upon receiving mail) but if you dont then simply touch it and make sure to have it chmoded 0600 and chowned to 'username'.mail.

[ 08 March 2001: Message edited by: PLBlaze ]

[Tyr-7BE]

Thanks a lot PLBlaze...that helps a lot. I'll check out that link. I don't have anything that delivers mail to my system as of yet...my weiner of a roommate uses our Bell Sympatico one.

[Tyr-7BE]

Different problem now. I went to that link that PLBlaze gave me (thanks a lot :)) and signed up for DDNS hosting. I now have a hostname, fixxxer.ath.cx. I changed my hostname to that under my exim config (I liked exim the best so I switched back to it). Now when I mail to lists.sourceforge.net, it doesn't go through to the mailing list, AND I don't receive anything back! The message just mysteriously disappears. I can still mail my hotmail account, so now I'm wondering what's happening.

[bdl]

Originally posted by Tyr-7BE:
Different problem now. I went to that link that PLBlaze gave me (thanks a lot :)) and signed up for DDNS hosting. I now have a hostname, fixxxer.ath.cx. I changed my hostname to that under my exim config (I liked exim the best so I switched back to it). Now when I mail to lists.sourceforge.net, it doesn't go through to the mailing list, AND I don't receive anything back! The message just mysteriously disappears. I can still mail my hotmail account, so now I'm wondering what's happening.

You changed it under exim but did ya change it system wide? Also, have you tried to ping or otherwise verify that the dynamic domain you have is up?

Im getting 65.92.47.94 is that right?

[ 08 March 2001: Message edited by: bdl ]

[Tyr-7BE]

Originally posted by bdl:

Im getting 65.92.47.94 is that right?
[ 08 March 2001: Message edited by: bdl ]

That's right...I have it set up so that it will update itself every day, and when linux boots. What's the system-wide mail config file?

[ 08 March 2001: Message edited by: Tyr-7BE ]

[bdl]

Im sorry, I meant did you change the hostname system wide, by using fixxxer.ath.cx as your system's hostname, not just changing it in exim.

linuxprompt# cat /etc/HOSTNAME

[Tyr-7BE]

It works! I changed the hostname under /etc/hostname, then I re-installed exim with all the proper configurations. I can mail to the mailing lists, receive mail, AND send to everyone else! Thanks a whole lot for your help guys. I think I'm beginning to get a vague idea of how this network stuff works!