occasional error message sent to root

[Matthew Seaman]

On Sat, Jan 03, 2004 at 10:21:27AM -0500, Dennis M. Yocum wrote:

> : hBU6NEbK027111: SYSERR(root): rewrite: excessive recursion (max 50),
> ruleset canonify

You've got a mail-loop.  One part of the message processing is
changing the address in one way, then another part is changing it back
again and re-submitting it to the first part.

Sendmail detects that it's been round that loop too many times and
bails out.

Now, exactly what it is that is causing the loop in this case we can't
say, as you don't provide enough information.  Check in your
/var/spool/mqueue for mail files with the same job number as given in
the log -- ie. the first character (h) may be different but the rest
(BU6NEbK027111) should appear in the file name.  Inspect these files
and see if you can deduce what the common factor is that is causing
the loop.  The sort of things to check for are (i) mail forwarding via
.forward files, aliases or virtusertable (ii) host name resolution via
DNS, /etc/hosts, NIS, LDAP or other mechanisms, plus effects due to
the use of mailertable to modify the default delivery location.

There's also the possibility of (iii) mail looping between several
machines -- machine A gives the message to machine B to deal with,
then machine B sends it back to machine A, but this generates a
different error message about "too many hops".

	Cheers,

	Matthew

-- 
Dr Matthew J Seaman MA, D.Phil.                       26 The Paddocks
                                                      Savill Way
PGP: http://www.infracaninophile.co.uk/pgpkey         Marlow
Tel: +44 1628 476614                                  Bucks., SL7 1TH UK
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