Re: Mail, ISDN, issues...

[Jamie McCarthy <jamie@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

bedlam@caresswm.org (bedlam) writes:

> Our mail and file serving is now handled by Linux. Some issues
> have cropped up, though: our internet connection through ISDN is
> distressingly intermittent. Ameritech and WMIS (the ISP) both
> say their sides are fine.
> 
> Now, Novell probably 'papered over' these problems more or less
> invisibly, while Debian and Exim complain, loudly. I think I
> shall have to ensure that Exim accepts mail from our 192.168.1.
> with an understanding that nameservice may not be up.

That should be perfectly fine.  Your exim (or sendmail if you were
running that) should accept mail to be sent, and if your net
connection is down, hold it until it can be sent.  That's one of the
main jobs of an MTA!

If it complains, slap it around a little, pipe it to /dev/null until
it quiets down :)

> Yet... we have some undeliverable addresses. msn.net seems to be having
> problems, among others. I can't find an MX entry. Is MS having problems?
> Anyone else have no response to 'host -t mx msn.net'?

Fails for me too.  I usually use 'dig' and that fails too.  'dig any msn.net'
shows its SOA, its name servers, and a number of A records, but no
MX records.  I'd say any email address that ends in @msn.net is
gone, probably gone for good -- get a new one.

> Basically, I have 4 mails with undeliverable addresses, msn.net
> and state.mi.us. 
> 
> killdevil:02:21am:~# host -t mx state.mi.us
> state.mi.us             MX      10 smtp-av1.state.mi.us
> state.mi.us             MX      20 smtp-av2.state.mi.us
> killdevil:02:21am:~# telnet state.mi.us 25
> telnet: could not resolve state.mi.us/25: No address associated with
> hostname

That one's not a problem.  The MX record tells you (and exim) to try
connecting to smtp-av1.state.mi.us or its backup, and that site works
fine (though it has a goofy welcome message):

$ telnet smtp-av1.state.mi.us 25
Trying 167.240.254.155...
Connected to smtp-av1.state.mi.us.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 **************************************************************2********************2*****200************0*00 ***********************
^]
telnet> cl
Connection closed.
--
        Jamie McCarthy
        jamie@mccarthy.vg
 http://jamie.mccarthy.vg/