mail loop problems?

Re: mail loop problems?

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At 1:01 PM -0800 12/19/99, Higher Powered wrote:
>Hi all,
>
>I'm also having this same problem- I get the "Circular delivery problems"
>in my mail logs. I cannot send nor receive mail from any domain. I have
>the domains set up in web*4.1 mail, the same machine as my web server and
>dns for now.
>
>I have everything else working fine (and hopefully set up correctly).
>
>Now I'm setting up a new mail server and trying to change the dns records to
>work properly. As far as I can tell, they are set up right, but mail is
>neither sending nor receiving. A couple of the domains set up are:
>fennel.net
>foothillstrading.com

There are a few problems here:

1) Your secondary server is not responding (taoist2.higherpowered.com).
2) Your primary server is giving non-authoritative responses when queried for fennel.net.
3) You left a period off of the end of this record:
foothillstrading.com. MX 20
postal2.higherpowered.com.foothillstrading.com.

>I also didn't get anything returned when I did an mx lookup for these
>domains using dig...

Interesting... You have two MX records in the foothillstrading.com domain. Remember to use the @server option with dig.

>Here's what my mail server says:
>
>ERROR! SMTP Out: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 12:45:58 -0800 ID=264 SMTP relay. Mail
>delivery error ( Circular delivery attempt) To:
>webmaster@higherpowered.com From: info@foothillstr...
>SMTP In: Sun, 19 Dec 1999 12:46:06 -0800 disconnect from
>www.harrispainthorses.com [208.1.125.162]

This indicates that the web server doesn't know it's supposed to accept mail for higherpowered.com. Configure this in your mail server preferences. Aside from the above three problems (and the notes about reverse records, below), your DNS is fine.

>Also, Im running web*4.1 as a virtual server. When I do a reverse lookup by
>ip address (208.1.125.162) how can I have this return the address of
>higherpowered.com?

Your reverse records are currently broken. Here's the problem:

f.root-servers.net says this:
1.208.in-addr.arpa. NS ns1-auth.sprintlink.net.
1.208.in-addr.arpa. NS ns2-auth.sprintlink.net.
1.208.in-addr.arpa. NS ns3-auth.sprintlink.net.

ns1-auth.sprintlink.net says this:
1.208.in-addr.arpa. NS icm1.icp.net.
1.208.in-addr.arpa. NS ns1-auth.sprintlink.net.
1.208.in-addr.arpa. NS ns2-auth.sprintlink.net.
1.208.in-addr.arpa. NS ns3-auth.sprintlink.net.
The host or domain "125.1.208.in-addr.arpa." does not exist
The host or domain "162.125.1.208.in-addr.arpa." does not exist

Talk to your ISP about this. Once you figure out who will eventually have control over 125.1.208.in-addr.arpa, you can start thinking about actual PTR records.

>I have multiple dns records for different domains pointing to this ip
>address. when I do a dns lookup for this ip with mactcp watcher I get:
>www.ultimatefurniture.com returned as the name- this is one of the virtual
>domains.

The reason for this is that you have configured a reverse zone file on your own servers (which may or may not end up being a legitimate place to put such a file...). In this file, you have these records:
162.125.1.208.in-addr.arpa. PTR www.foothillstrading.com.
162.125.1.208.in-addr.arpa. PTR www.michaeltyler.com.
162.125.1.208.in-addr.arpa. PTR www.fennel.net.
162.125.1.208.in-addr.arpa. PTR www.ultimateweavers.com.
162.125.1.208.in-addr.arpa. PTR www.ultimatefurniture.com.
162.125.1.208.in-addr.arpa. PTR www.gacapitolassociates.com.
162.125.1.208.in-addr.arpa. PTR taoist.higherpowered.com.
162.125.1.208.in-addr.arpa. PTR www.higherpowered.com.

This is counterproductive, as you discovered with MacTCP Watcher - it gave you an essentially randomly chosen record from this set. To solve this, if your server ends up legitimately authoritative for your reverse zone, you'll pick one of these records and delete the rest.

Whichever one it is, it should match whatever your mail server is using for its true name (see below).

>also notice where it says "disconnect from www.harrispainthorses.com" How do
>I get rid of this? Where is it picking this up from?(also another dns
>record)

Your mail server has decided that its true name is www.harrispainthorses.com. Here's its initial greeting (read from telnetting to port 25):

220 www.harrispainthorses.com WebSTAR Mail Simple Mail Transfer Service Ready

There should be a setting for this somewhere in your mail settings. Sorry, but I'm not using WebSTAR Mail for anything, so I can't tell you which setting to change.

>If I do a trace route I get www.higherpowered.com
>
>why does dns lookup not return taoist.higherpowered.com?

Again, you get randomly chosen records from the list above. Each time, it'll be different.
____________________________________________________________________
Chris Buxton cbuxton@menandmice.com
Men & Mice http://www.menandmice.com
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