sendmail Problem

Any sendmail experts out there willing to walk me thru a sendmail problem?

[hiker_jjw]

Hi all,

Long time WebmasterWorld member and supporter here. Usually, I'm giving advice to people, but now I'm asking for it. I've come across some very bad luck in the past couple of weeks; two hurricanes in Orlando and my System Admin business partner is now in jail for child support issues.

Anyway, I've been trying to figure out what's going wrong with sendmail on my Redhat/Apache server. For some strange reason I can no longer "send" email, but I can receive my email. I've tried several different email clients, just to make sure it wasn't a MS issue. The Outlook express error message given when trying to receive email is:

Task 'mail.mydomain.com - Sending' reported error (0x800CCC92) : 'Your e-mail server rejected your login. Verify your user name and password in your account properties. Under Tools, click E-mail accounts.'

Now, here's where it gets strange. I can recieve mail with the same username/password, and even log into via a secure shell or ftp. I believe the problem started when I changed my password using the 'passwd' command. I have since changed the password back to the original, just to try to correct the problem.

I've looked around in the /etc/mail folder. I have the entries in the virtusertable and even added an entry into trusted-users. Anyone have any ideas? Anyone know of any "other" good online resources that might help me figure out this issue?

Thanks in Advance,
Jeff

[encyclo]

Assuming you haven't touched the sendmail configuration, then the problem may be elsewhere. Does your ISP block connections to port 25?

Also, in your email client configuration, are you using the full domain in the login name when sending (ie. [e-mail] )?

[jamie]

hi hiker,

you may well have done these, but to go around solving these sort of probs i usually

* delete the old account, reboot the pc (great windows hack that) and create a new email account with the same settings

if that doesn't work

* if you have shell access, take a look at /var/log/maillog whilst trying to send and receive (tail -f /var/log/maillog)

and then search in google for the exact error message the maillog shows. in my experience sendmail problems are quite specific and it is difficult to give general answers, but google is bound to find someone with similar problems.

good luck

(edit reason: mispelling)

[edited by: jamie at 8:34 pm (utc) on Sep. 17, 2004]

[encyclo]

I forgot to mention: IIRC, error 0x800CCC92 is simply "incorrect password". It can happen that Outlook Express gets a corrupted password. I would still think that the problem is more likely at your end than on the server, so I'd explore those avenues first.

[hiker_jjw]

I havn't touched the sendmail.cf at all. I don't believe the ISP has port 25 blocked. We have a dedicated server plan with full access to everything. Other accounts seem to send email just fine.

I have two domains that I am trying to send from. The first domain uses the same username. I also have a short for that first domain.

[e-mail]
and
[e-mail]

The second domain, is working as a catch all.

[e-mail]

I definately looks like an authentication / login issue, but I don't understand why.

I'm going to try some of the suggestions above.

Jeff

[hiker_jjw]

Here's the latest error message from /var/log/maillog. It seems that something is fairly wrong on my machine.

Sep 17 17:00:06 ns1 sendmail[11258]: i8HL05D0011258: 212.221.27.24.cfl.rr.com [24.27.221.212] did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA

Sep 17 17:05:54 ns1 sendmail[11608]: i8HL5rD0011608: 212.221.27.24.cfl.rr.com [24.27.221.212] did not issue MAIL/EXPN/VRFY/ETRN during connection to MTA

I tried to delete the email accounts, reboot, and re-add the accounts. Any other advice?

Thanks,
Jeff

[hiker_jjw]

Well, in an attempt to fix this issue, I installed the lastest Mozilla Thunderbird email program on Win XP. It's a very well thought out email client. I'm very impressed. It's much better than Outlook Express.

Anyway, it didn't seem to fix the problem. I'm still having login / authentication issues with that dam email server. I can still recieve email, but can't seem to send any.

Oh well.

[jamie]

hi jeff,

if i remember correctly i get those sort of messages when my internet connection has cut off in the middle of downloading a mail.

i shut down sendmail
% service sendmail stop
and check
% top
to see if there are still any sendmail processes running. if there are i
% kill processnumber
and then start sendmail up again
%service sendmail start

and see if that makes a difference.

(these are only my tips - I am sure there are more efficient ways to do this)

good luck

[hiker_jjw]

Well, I tried the stop/top/kill/start of the sendmail service, but it didn't seem to correct the problem. I tried this before, without any result, but figured I give it another try.

I also looked into the Port 25 issue. I called my ISP, and they are not blocking Port 25; Time Warner Cable modem - cfl.rr.com. I also tested the port 25 on my server using the following Telnet command. It seemed to connect without any problems.

telnet mx1.domainname.com 25

So, now I'm going to attempt to setup a POP/SMTP client on the server (maybe a PHP based one) and see if it will connect. This way, maybe I can further isolate the problem to my home PC. Then I can throw it and the Win OS out the Window and start from stratch.

Thanks for all the advice.
Much appreciated.

[feeble]

its a shot in the dark but have you checked the info that sendmail used to authentercate your user : pass is intact?

it can't be port problem because your mail wouldn't work at all if the client was useing the wrong port

and starting and stoping the process wont work because the setings stay the same! it almost sounds like a simple permissons error

one question is this problem on the server or your workstation, home comp, are others useing this mail system. finding out as much about most aspects of you sendmail system mite lead you to the answer rather than the clients