bounces to root

Raphael Langerhorst raphael.langerhorst at kdemail.net
Tue Jan 3 16:30:55 CET 2006


Am Sonntag 18 Dezember 2005 21:08 schrieb Bernhard Reiter:
> Am Montag, 12. Dezember 2005 17:07 schrieb Raphael Langerhorst:
> > On Monday 12 December 2005 11:22 Raphael Langerhorst wrote:
> > > On Monday 12 December 2005 08:00, Raphael Langerhorst wrote:
> > > > On Monday 12 December 2005 07:52, Raphael Langerhorst wrote:
> > > > > I have an issue with "Undelivered Mail Returned to Sender" bounces
> > > > > to root at kolab.my.domain which have an empty sender field. These
> > > > > happen repeatedly (every 2-5 minutes) after a mail has been sent -
> > > > > sending works actually, the mail is received at the other end.
>
> Note that currently a Kolab Server will not allow empty return path
> from some users as used by MDNs. This is a known bug.
> If the email comes from a trusted server, it should still work.

I am not sure if I understand that, but I'm pretty sure this is was not the 
case here.

>
> > > > we are using Kolab2 2.0.1 (with first security update) on FreeBSD
> > > > 5.4/i386
> > >
> > > The Problem:
> > > FreeBSD by default sends out report emails for daily/weekly/... cron
> > > job results. These emails are, according to /etc/aliases sent to the
> > > user "root". Since Kolab2 is running an SMTP server on port 25, this
> > > SMTP server is used.
>
> Which is fine in principle as the MTA of the Kolab Server should be your
> primary MTA on your system.

yes, it is.

>
> > > And because Kolab2 (this one here at least) has
> > > configured a smart/relayhost the email ends up being sent to that
> > > smart/relayhost because kolab2 does not detect the domain to be its own
> > > - since the host name itself (kolab) is as well included.
> > >
> > > The solution:
> > > rather simple, just edit /etc/aliases and set a reasonable alias for
> > > the root user (first alias, commented out by default). After that, you
> > > have to run /usr/bin/newaliases  (NOT /kolab/sbin/newaliases)
> > >
> > > It might take a couple of minutes (or even half an hour) until all
> > > changes have taken effect (for example if leftover mails with a wrong
> > > header are still around).
> >
> > Well, almost. Apparently root at kolab.my.domain still got sent... so the
> > simple and save solution was to move /usr/sbin/sendmail out of the way. I
> > would be interested in a cleaner solution though.
>
> From your posts I do not have a complete picture,
> but if the sender was empty, why not add a real sender that would
> be the contact person for this daemon or service?

As far as the logs go, a sender as well as a receiver was set (which was 
always root at kolab.my.domain).

I *think* that the issue is the smarthost/relayhost setting. It seems that the 
kolab postfix does not evaluate whether he is the receiver himself (or at 
least the host part, since root is not in the LDAP user db) but forwards to 
the smarthost. That actually might be an issue of Kolab2, as it recently came 
to my mind again I thought I better answer this email :) maybe it helps.

>
> Bernhard
>

Best wishes,
Raphael




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