Re: [SLUG] Running a mail server in the privacy of my own home

From: Bill Triplett (btt@nethouse.com)
Date: Thu Apr 04 2002 - 07:27:06 EST


On Thu, 2002-04-04 at 00:37, Bill wrote:
> I can get mail addressed to bill@a.organic-earth.com.

Bill,

Your DNS is a little strange. There are two MX (Mail eXchanger) records,
both with the same priority, pointing to different hosts. One of the
hosts (a.organic-earth.com) doesn't exist. IIRC, same priority MX
records are picked in random order. Either way, unless you are going to
have two mail server machines, there only needs to be one MX record. See
if you can delete the one that points to a.organic-earth.com, if you
don't need it. This is probably not the problem, as if it happens to
pick a.organic-earth.com, it will fall back to plain old
organic-earth.com since a. doesn't exist. But it makes the DNS
inconsistent anyway. If you do add a., don't make it a CNAME. MX records
can't point to CNAME :-P

> Now what I want to do
> is get it addressed to bill@organic-earth.com and also allow my wife and
> close family to have accounts on this server (using recent postfix)

Here is a transcript of what is happening when someone sends mail to
bill@organic-earth.com, then to bill@a.organic.earth.com:

Trying 64.27.213.176...
Connected to organic-earth.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HELO dev.nethouse.com
220 a.organic-earth.com ESMTP Postfix (Release-20010228)
(Linux-Mandrake)
250 a.organic-earth.com
MAIL FROM: btt@nethouse.com
250 Ok
RCPT TO: bill@organic-earth.com
454 <bill@organic-earth.com>: Recipient address rejected: Relay access
denied

* Whoops. Ok... now we try a.organic-earth :

RSET
250 Ok
MAIL FROM: btt@nethouse.com
250 Ok
RCPT TO: bill@a.organic-earth.com
250 Ok
RSET
250 Ok

* Ok.. so somewhere in the postfix configuration there need to be an
allowance for the entire domain organic-earth.com ... I don't know
postfix config... sorry :( In sendmail it is the class w file (usually
/etc/mail/local-host-names.)

> Am I headed in the right direction (to get mail addressed to
> organic-earth.com) or should I show a.organic-earth.com in the Host Name
> section?
>
>
> Host Name Priority Mail Server
> organic-earth.com Hi a.organic-earth.com <--original entry
> organic-earth.com Hi organic-earth.com

Yes, probably... delete the a. and leave the plain organic-earth.com.

> /etc/hosts looks like this:
> [root@a bill]# cat /etc/hosts
> 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost
> 192.168.xxx.xxx a.organic-earth.com a
> #192.168.xxx.xxx organic-earth.com a organic-earth
>
> Does my problem perhaps lie here?

Well, postfix is getting it's a.organic-earth.com name (on its banner)
from somewhere. It is unlikely that it is getting it from
bind/named-based reverse DNS, so it is either getting it from /etc/hosts
or from postfix configuration.

Good luck...
Bill



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