Server Can't Send Email

Return address is not set causess invalid address error

[mennis]

I'm a programmer still learning apache, but I know something is not set correctly in the config. The server won't send emails using the mail function in PHP because it says the return address for the server is invalid.

They have it set to a weird name like bob1 in the httpd.conf file. And the errors come back saying nobody@bob1 is an invalid address. That message actually goes to the root mailbox because they don't have the error log setup correctly either. The example is below with the real domain changed to blah.com.

I tried changing it in the httpd.conf file to a real domain, but that didn't seem to do it. Is that name (bob1) set somewhere else too? And to make matters worse they have a website on a server with a domain.com address and this one is on a different server with bob.domain.com as the subdomain. Which makes me wonder if this is set somewhere other than this server.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! And they don't have a server admin anymore, just a data center tech who handles things like roouting issues. So I have no choice but to figure this out.

Thank You!

#######################################################

The original message was received at Wed, 29 Mar 2006 04:45:03 -0700
from nobody@localhost

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
[e-mail]
(reason: 553 5.1.8 <nobody@bob1>... Domain of sender address nobody@bob1 does not exist)

----- Transcript of session follows -----
... while talking to blah.com.:
>>> MAIL From:<nobody@bob1> SIZE=370
<<< 553 5.1.8 <nobody@bob1>... Domain of sender address nobody@bob1 does not exist
501 5.6.0 Data format error

--k2TBj8N11211.1143632708/leo1
Content-Type: message/delivery-status

Reporting-MTA: dns; leo1
Arrival-Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 04:45:03 -0700

Final-Recipient: RFC822; [e-mail]
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.8
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 553 5.1.8 <nobody@bob1>... Domain of sender address nobody@bob1 does not exist
Last-Attempt-Date: Wed, 29 Mar 2006 04:45:08 -0700

[jdMorgan]

I'm not a mail expert, but one question comes to mind immediately: Did you restart the server after making your changes? Apache compiles the config files only at start-up, and subsequently uses only the compiled result. So, changes to "source" config files are not seen in "real-time."

Jim

[mennis]

That was a good question, and yes I did restart apache after each attempt at changing the config file. :)