unix mail program problem on virtual setup

[imhotep]

I am having a problem sending mail from my unix web server. We have one user set up to receive all our mail, the mail is routed to the individual users via appleshare ip when it reaches our local network. We have two ip's assigned to us by our hosting company, a web server and a mail server. They tell me the mail is reaching the mail ip fine. The issue is I'm trying to send mail from telnet (eventually from a cgi script) using "virtual mail username@domain.com" and the server is not recognizing any usernames. I can send mail to other addresses such as yahoo, earthlink, etc. just not anyone at our domain. Tech support at first told me to add users with vadduser but eventually they cut support and told me it was a LAN problem. Any suggestions how to solve this dilemna? Thanks

 

[MikeLacey]

Can you send mail to users in your domain if you don't do it with telnet? Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com
Email welcome if you're in a hurry or something -- but post in tek-tips as well please, and I will post my reply here as well.

 

[imhotep]

Yes, absolutely. Sorry for not making that clear. I can send mail to/from our domain without problem when using an e-mail client (outlook). My problems are with trying to use our web server to send mail to our domain irrelevant of if I use sendmail, mail, pine, etc.

 

[MikeLacey]

I would imagine that the mailforwarding host on your web site is set to your ISP's mail server - so that you can send mail to external addresses.

The addresses in your local domain that you're having trouble with - are they visible from outside your organisation? Would it work if I sent mail to one of them? Mike
michael.j.lacey@ntlworld.com
Email welcome if you're in a hurry or something -- but post in tek-tips as well please, and I will post my reply here as well.

 

[imhotep]

Yes the e-mail addresses on our domain work fine. The only time they have ever not worked in any way whatsoever is the current situation: surfing to our web site and trying to e-mail via a cgi script OR logging in via telnet and issuing the mail command directly to the server. The server is a unix/apache server with virtual configuration.

 

[imhotep]

I have been pulling my hair out over this problem... does anyone out there have any ideas, suggestions, hunches? anything would help. Mike was saying the outgoing mail gets forwarded to the mail server. That seems to be where the problem occurs. Why would the e-mail addresses be valid for every sender except our web server? If I could just figure out if it is a web server/mail server config issue or an issue with our office LAN it would help narrow it down at least... we run on a AppleShare IP network which does the job of distributing the incoming mail, and sending outgoing mail to our mail server online. Please help! I will exchange knowledge for knowledge! (Flash design, ActionScript, Perl/CGI scripting, JavaScript, DHTML, Java... obviously not network admin tho )

 

[scooter6]

there should be a way (I use SCO OpenServer 5.0.4) to "interactively" look at your mail being sent , the route it takes, etc.

For example, without knowing what kind of unix you use, if I issue the command

./usr/mmdf/bin/deliver -w from the command line, it will scroll to the screen the steps it is taking. That normally helps me out when I have problems.

Not sure if this helps, just an idea to try.

Otherwise, you might want to check permissions on the cgi script, etc

scooter6