Deferred: Connection refused sending host 1

[cazilla]

HI; Firstly thanks for reading this and if responing, even a bigger thanks.
I am configuring a sendmail mail hub that is only serving my local network.
The issue that I am having is that I am unable to collect e-mail from the mail hub using pop3 from my client hosts. On the sendmail mail hub I have a list of "Deferred: Connection refused by <the_sending_user@email_host.com> stacking up in my mail que.
The outline of my configuration is as follows:
1 system curently acting as mail hub running RH 9 and its sendmail version 8.12.4. Both are stock (I know I need to upgrade but thats a later project. I just want to get this to work first) internal firewalls are disabled, ipop3, imap, smtp daemons are up.

My clients are all using RH 9 in various stages of upgrade.
Firewalls here are not an issue as well.
Sendmail is installed but disabled on these systems but can be manually started. the mail clients that they are using are mozilla mail and ximians's evolution. they are configured to retrieve mail via POP and send mail via smtp.
they all are able to authenticate with the mail hub (as long as they have a user account to loginto the mail hub). they deliver thier mail via the smtp portion of the transaction but do not recover any mail.
I think this is a client side authentication issue, but due to my inexperience, if it is, I am not sure how to go about fixing this.
any constructive help would be GREATLY appreciated!!

thank you.

 

[cazilla]

OK I ( this part was staring me in the face <_<) figured out that the MAIL Hub is trying to relay via SMTP back to the sending host and since there is nothing on the host that will respond to SMTP thats were I'm getting the "status=deffered: connection refused" error. However the quest is still "how in the heck do I get the Mail Hub to hold onto that mail to be retrived by pop?

 

[RhythmAce]

When you say that this will only be for your intranet, does that mean the mail server will not communicate with the outside world at all? Or are you saying the server will only relay mail that comes from within your intranet? If I understand what you want correctly, I don't think you want sendmail to act as a hub. If it were acting as a hub, it would pass mail for a particular domain onto another server. If you want your machine to be the smtp, po3 and imap servers for your domain, then for sure you don't want to act as just a hub. If you can tell us what you want your mail to do (both incoming and outgoing), I'm sure we can help configure your system to do that.

 

[cazilla]

Hey thanks for repliying Rhythmace. What Im trying to do is have the sendmail host hold the mail for clients that will retrive it via pop3 or IMAP. Again, the clients will not be running or have sendmail on them. they will be using pop3 clients. 8)

 

[RhythmAce]

Look in /var/spool/mail. You should see files with the same name as system users. For example if you have a user named joe, you should see /var/spool/mail/joe. If there are no files in this directory, then the pop3/imap servers have nothing to send. There are a few reasons why there is no mail. Is this going to be a mail server for a registered domain? If so, then did you create an "MX" record for it? If this server is not part of a registered domain, then you would use the server's machine (host) name where the client asks for the pop3/smtp server. You would also have to configure sendmail to use "Smart Host" and send mail out through your ISP's mail server. I won't be able to get much more specific until I know if this server will be part of an FQDN or just local.

 

[cazilla]

Hi , hope you all had a good 4Th.
Yes this server will eventually be part of a registered domain. As far as DNS goes. I have a pair up.
The setup for the domain DB file is as follows:
<hostname>.<host.domain>. IN A <IP Address>
(more "A" records")
<domain.name>. IN MX 0 <hostname>.<host.domain>.

Now the other thing is that my mail server is also acting as a secondary (slave DNS) with the appropriate NS line in the beginning (after SOA of course).

SO let me try with adding the users mail box and see if that alleviates the issue that I'm currently having.

 

[RhythmAce]

If you don't see anything in /var/spool/mail, then mail is not coming into the server. Here are a few things to check. First, look in /etc/mail/sendmail.mc for a line that looks like this:

DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl

This tells sendmail to only look at the loopback device, and not the network interface for incoming mail. Change 127.0.0.1 to your eth0 ip or comment it out by placing a dnl in front of it like this:

dnl DAEMON_OPTIONS(`Port=smtp,Addr=127.0.0.1, Name=MTA')dnl

There's also no problem in deleting it. Anytime you edit sendmail.mc, you have to build a new sendmail.cf. This is done with the following command:

m4 /etc/mail/sendmail.mc > /etc/mail/sendmail.cf

Now you need to tell sendmail who the local domains and hosts are. Open /etc/mail/local-host-names and add the name of your localdomain. In the future this will be the registered domains that are hosted by this server. The next thing you need to do is to allow relaying for this domain. To do that, open /etc/mail/access and add a line that looks like this:

mydomain.com RELAY

You will see other lines aready there for localhost and 127.0.0.1 - do NOT delete those lines. Now you need to create the database:

makemap hash /etc/mail/access.db < /etc/mail/access

Now just restart sendmail and mail should start coming in.

 

[cazilla]

right, all those thing you suggested I had already done.
Now, I do know that the mail is comming into the server becuase I have a mailq addressed from my various client tests. Also I didnt have any additional maiboxes (clients?) listed in /var/spool/mail so I added and chownd'ed clients to themselfs and chgrp'ed all (expt root) to mail (they do have unix accounts). However, I'm still not able to get mail to go to those mailboxes. 8)