sendmail: Operation timed out with

[Kevin D. Kinsey, DaleCo, S.P.]

Justin Brody wrote:

>On Tue, 2 Mar 2004, Matthew Seaman wrote:
>On Tue, Mar 02, 2004 at 05:23:52PM -0500, Justin Brody wrote:
>  
>
>>>Here's a bit from /var/log/maillog:
>>>Mar  2 16:40:39 aleph sendmail[327]: i1SGr1hh004059:
>>>to=<brody at math.umd.edu>, de
>>>lay=3+04:47:38, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=esmtp, pri=8130413,
>>>relay=math.umd.edu.,
>>> dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred: Operation timed out with math.umd.edu.
>>>Mar  2 16:40:39 aleph sendmail[327]: i1S4wehh000450:
>>>to=<brody at math.umd.edu>, ctladdr=<justin at aleph.none.org> (1001/1001), delay=3+16:41:59,
>>>xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=esmtp, pri=10290322, relay=math.umd.edu., dsn=4.0.0, stat=Deferred:
>>>Operation timed out with math.umd.edu.
>>>
>>>Don't know if that says anything new.  I would wonder if it's some sort of
>>>lookup based on "ctladdr", but I get the same error if use "-f
>>>brody at math.umd.edu" which does show up in that field.
>>>
>>>sendmail -q -v reports:
>>>
>>>aleph# sendmail -q -v
>>>
>>>Running /var/spool/mqueue/i22M7pof000364 (sequence 1 of 17)
>>><brody at math.umd.edu>... Connecting to math.umd.edu. via esmtp...
>>><brody at math.umd.edu>... Deferred: Operation timed out with math.umd.edu.
>>>
>>>Running /var/spool/mqueue/i22KDkof000227 (sequence 2 of 17)
>>><jdbrody at wam.umd.edu>... Connecting to po1.wam.umd.edu. via esmtp..
>>><jdbrody at wam.umd.edu>... Connecting to po2.wam.umd.edu. via esmtp...
>>><jdbrody at wam.umd.edu>... Connecting to po0.wam.umd.edu. via esmtp...
>>><jdbrody at wam.umd.edu>... Deferred: Operation timed out with po0.wam.umd.edu.
>>>
>>>etc...
>>>      
>>>
>>Bah! All that says is connection timeout. No indication of *why*.
>>You're not even getting the SMTP banner there.  I suspect it's
>>probably something to do with an administrative descision on behalf of
>>UMD admins -- perhaps they reject connections to hosts in DUL block
>>lists.
>>    
>>
>>>I'll give a shot at changing my domain name - what should I use?  I'm a
>>>bit too poor to actually buy one :)  Should I just change to use my ISP's
>>>domain?
>>>      
>>>
>>Yes -- do a reverse lookup on your IP number and use that name in your
>>sendmail config.  It may not look pretty, but it should let you see if
>>that is the problem.
>>
>>The other thing to do is forward all of your e-mail via your ISP's
>>smart host.  As you are probably expected to do.
>>
>>	Cheers,
>>
>>	Matthew
>>
>>--
>>Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
>>
>>Well, I tried forwarding to my "Smart relay host" and get the same error
>>message, with "via relay..." appended.  On the other hand, a reverse DNS
>>lookup doesn't work - perhaps this is my entire problem?  I'm not sure how
>>to fix it if so!
>>
>>Here's some output:
>>
>>aleph# ifconfig rl0
>>rl0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
>>        inet6 fe80::2e0:4cff:fe98:36fa%rl0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
>>        inet 192.168.0.197 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255
>>        ether 00:e0:4c:98:36:fa
>>        media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
>>        status: active
>>aleph# nslookup 192.168.0.197
>>Server:  ns1.dc.cox.net
>>Address:  68.100.16.30
>>
>>*** ns1.dc.cox.net can't find 192.168.0.197: Non-existent host/domain
>>aleph# cat /etc/resolv.conf
>>search dc.dc.cox.net
>>nameserver 68.100.16.30
>>nameserver 68.100.16.25
>>
>>I do have an entry in my /etc/hosts file:
>>192.168.0.197           aleph.cox.net aleph
>>
>>But apparently it's not reading that.  [the change to cox.net is just 5
>>minutes old, BTW].
>>
>>Thanks again for the help!
>>    
>>

Hi Justin...

Matthew meant "do a reverse lookup on
your *public* IP number".  (As you probably
know, 192.168.x.x is an RFC 1918 private
[non-routable] network address.)  You can use
nslookup for this, but supposedly it is
(or is becoming) deprecated in favor of dig(1).

However, I'm lazy, and just use host(1). :-D

Based on your last email, I'm thinking you're
at 129.2.56.21, which is archimedes.math.umd.edu....

But that doesn't agree with what you've
written.  What's the output of ifconfig?

Kevin Kinsey
DaleCo, S.P.