[SGVLUG] Postfix problem (?)

Emerson, Tom Tom.Emerson at wbconsultant.com
Thu Feb 23 13:22:16 PST 2006


I'm not sure if this is a case of SuSE being to "cute" on the install, or a (more likely) bonehead screwup on my part, but I've got an odd situation occuring with the system I set up for my minister.

This is a typical behind-a-firewall system, and (given the environment) I chose a system name of "trinity" for his workstation.  The "cute" part is the fact the installation essentially "demands" a domain, and instead of using the ISP as a domain (sbcglobal.net) I think I chose a domain that this church actually has some claim to: congchurch.org.  As such, somewhere in the main.cf file was the line:

   myhostname = trinity.congchurch.org

I also set up amavisd to "wrap around" clam-av and spamassassin.

What I'm seeing in the log file are attempts to deliver mail to "localhost.congchurch.org" that are failing to connect.  I suspect these are occuring on the return-from-amavisd side, which perhaps needs some explanation:

One way to set up external filters in postfix is to set up postfix to listen on two ports: 25 and "something else" [10025].  Anything coming in to port 25 for local delivery gets "delivered" to an external filter process.  The filter process, in turn, does what it needs to do and forwards the result to the alternate port (100025).  Anything coming in to the alternate then pick up as if the filter wasn't there in the first place, i.e., the message gets "delivered" locally (via procmail, usually) or gueued to "other" servers [usually for bounce messages]

This problem (of failing to connect to localhost.congchurch.org) is easily solved by adding "localhost.congchurch.org" to the /etc/hosts file, but I'm curious as to why the system chose to fully-qualify "localhost" in the first place.

A second problem that seems to be happening is that any "bounce" messages are queuing up and clogging postfix -- due, of course, to spam in the first place I imagine -- the "external" mail servers refuse to "talk" to this system when it attempts to deliver directly  (or else outbound port 25 is blocked...) If I set things up to talk to a "relayhost", it fails because the "host" [smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.net, in this case] requires authentication.

Any suggestions?


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