double bounce issue 2

[Noway2]

All,

I ran into a problem with postfix that I am not sure how to resolve. I inadvertently, sent myself a test message from hotmail with the address misspelled. Ultimately, this resulted in some form of double bounce between my postfix server and my ISP's SMTP server each refusing to "relay" the message. For some reason, which I am not sure of, my hotmail account did NOT get a mailerdaemon message indicating delivery failure (which it used to - so something changed). I read that this might be a side effect of using postgrey, but I disabled that and the 'bouncing' still continued. In the end, I resolved the issue but not until my ISP hit the attempting to send 1000 emails a day limit and closed the account down temporarily. I solved it by adding a catchall user to postfix which received the hotmail messages and this stopped it. As far as I can tell, this would have stopped after a couple of bounces, but hotmail kept injecting new attempts.

I have included a portion of the (debug) logs from mail.log below. I would like to know if there is a setting or something that I could have changed to avoid this and instead have the mailerdaemon return it as undeliverable.

As the log shows, the user failed a MySQL lookup (which it would) after passing through postgrey and amavis.

Log snipit follows:

May 28 06:38:48 main postfix/smtpd[16735]: connect from bay0-omc1-s28.bay0.hotmail.com[65.54.246.100]
May 28 06:38:49 main postgrey[7444]: action=pass, reason=triplet found, client_name=bay0-omc1-s28.bay0.hotmail.com, client_address=65.54.246.100, sender=no_spam_me2@hotmail.com, recipient=mat@noway2.thruhere.net
May 28 06:38:49 main postfix/proxymap[16736]: warning: mysql query failed: You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near '??/',maildir) FROM mailbox WHERE username='mat@noway2.thruhere.net' and active =' at line 1
May 28 06:38:49 main postfix/smtpd[16735]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from bay0-omc1-s28.bay0.hotmail.com[65.54.246.100]: 451 4.3.0 <mat@noway2.thruhere.net>: Temporary lookup failure; from=<no_spam_me2@hotmail.com> to=<mat@noway2.thruhere.net> proto=ESMTP helo=<bay0-omc1-s28.bay0.hotmail.com>
May 28 06:38:49 main postfix/cleanup[16738]: 7A40D6662: message-id=<20090528103849.7A40D6662@mail.noway2.thruhere.net>
May 28 06:38:49 main postfix/qmgr[8527]: 7A40D6662: from=<double-bounce@mail.noway2.thruhere.net>, size=1098, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
May 28 06:38:49 main postfix/smtpd[16735]: disconnect from bay0-omc1-s28.bay0.hotmail.com[65.54.246.100]
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/smtpd[16735]: connect from hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com[71.74.56.123]
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/smtpd[16735]: NOQUEUE: reject: RCPT from hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com[71.74.56.123]: 554 5.7.1 <postmaster@mail.noway2.thruhere.net>: Relay access denied; from=<double-bounce@mail.noway2.thruhere.net> to=<postmaster@mail.noway2.thruhere.net> proto=ESMTP helo=<hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com>
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/smtpd[16735]: disconnect from hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com[71.74.56.123]
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/smtp[16739]: 7A40D6662: to=<postmaster@mail.noway2.thruhere.net>, orig_to=<postmaster>, relay=smtp-server.triad.rr.com[71.74.56.22]:25, delay=0.99, delays=0.13/0.03/0.11/0.71, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (250 Message received: 20090528103635168.ILWF11757@hrndva-omta02.mail.rr.com)
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/qmgr[8527]: 7A40D6662: removed
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/smtpd[16735]: connect from hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com[71.74.56.125]
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/smtpd[16735]: C01EE6662: client=hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com[71.74.56.125]
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/cleanup[16738]: C01EE6662: message-id=<20090528103635732.ILWL11757@hrndva-omta02.mail.rr.com>
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/qmgr[8527]: C01EE6662: from=<>, size=3489, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
May 28 06:38:50 main postfix/smtpd[16735]: disconnect from hrndva-omtalb.mail.rr.com[71.74.56.125]

 

[Noway2]

I finally found an answer to my problem and figured I would post it here in case it ever helps anyone else.

The key was in the statement "warning: mysql query failed: You have an error in your SQL syntax".

I copied part of the MySQL configuration files from a how-to that was created with Wordpress. The post had a warning about wordpress converting "tick marks (')" to funny characters and I thought I had gotten them all.

It turns out that there was one remaining and that it was the cause of the error. Once this was corrected, unknown virtual users got a 500 level response for non existant user rather than the temporary lookup problem.

The moral of the story is: be VERY careful about the characters in your SQL configuration files!

 

[stevexff]

Have a star for the solo effort, and for posting back the solution - most folks don't bother

Steve

[small]"Every program can be reduced by one instruction, and every program has at least one bug. Therefore, any program can be reduced to one instruction which doesn't work." (Object:erlDesignPatterns)[/small]