On 4/18/2010 4:40 PM, groups wrote:
Noel Jones wrote, On 04/18/2010 04:20 PM:
On 4/18/2010 4:16 PM, groups wrote:

Postfix logs help you know what happened to a particular message. Look
in your logs for bounces (sender=<>) arriving from your relayhost, and
see what postfix does with it. No need to wonder where they went.


-- Noel Jones

A lot of the send only hosts have only an IP (not in DNS)

Look in the logs for the IP to find associated QUEUEIDs.


Apr 18 16:01:24 mailhost postfix/qmgr[3283]: 5BE9956799: from=<>,
size=89424, nrcpt=1 (queue active)


Look in the logs for other entries with that same QUEUEID 5BE9956799
to see other information associated with that transaction.


only 1 entry per transaction ID..
notthing in
/var/spool/postfix ...

ok.. and found something interesting..

Apr 18 16:01:22 mailhost postfix/qmgr[3283]: 04C2A56799: from=<>,
size=83199, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Apr 18 16:01:22 mailhost postfix/qmgr[3283]: 2B54756799: from=<>,
size=83614, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Apr 18 16:01:22 mailhost postfix/qmgr[3283]: 4D99856799: from=<>,
size=84029, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Apr 18 16:01:22 mailhost postfix/qmgr[3283]: 7B1F756799: from=<>,
size=84444, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Apr 18 16:01:22 mailhost postfix/qmgr[3283]: 9BD4456799: from=<>,
size=84859, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Apr 18 16:01:22 mailhost postfix/qmgr[3283]: BF6DC56799: from=<>,
size=85274, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Apr 18 16:01:22 mailhost postfix/qmgr[3283]: E147056799: from=<>,
size=85689, nrcpt=1 (queue active)

All have the same invalid recipient..

These show the sender and number of recipients = 1; the recipient address is listed in a different log line.

That seems like an awful lot of bounces in a short period of time. Sending lots of mail to undeliverable addresses is a red flag that something is wrong -- such as a badly outdated mail list, or a compromised machine spewing spam.

One of your tasks is to investigate why there are so many bounces, and find a way to reduce them. Sending large amounts of undeliverable mail will have a bad effect on your server's reputation and may eventually lead to blacklisting.


Almost looks like it is "ping-ponging" back and forth between the
*master-relay* and my relay..

Messages with the null sender "<>" are never bounced, they must be delivered or discarded.

Bounces are always sent with the null sender.
This prevents bounces from ever looping (except in rare cases of stupid user tricks such as a .forward that rewrites <> to something else -- don't do that).

Further information about those messages can be found in the logs.


I have seen this invalid recipient on the old Sendmail box.. and
it ended up in my queue then expires.. (the sender host has been out of
the office when I tried to contact them)

so it looks like I have something not right..
there is nothing in mailq..

Charles

You need to examine the log further. If there's a problem, postfix will likely tell you what it is, or at least give you a better idea of where to look.

Postfix generates several log lines for each message. You need to look at *all* the lines with the same QUEUEID to see what happened to a message.

Logs for a single message look something like this below (with my comments). Because postfix can process many messages in parallel, logs for a single message may be separated by a considerable number of unrelated log entries. There may be more or fewer entries depending on what happens with a transaction, but this is fairly typical.


Apr 18 00:00:20 mgate2 postfix/smtpd[91955]: connect from private.webmail.example.org[192.168.70.47] to smtpd
(client connected; the hostname and IP are logged)

Apr 18 00:00:20 mgate2 postfix/smtpd[91955]: 1A2C779788F: client=private.webmail.example.org[192.168.70.47] (the QUEUEID "1A2C779788F" is assigned. That means there was at least one recipient accepted and a queue file was created. Future lines pertaining to this specific message will include this same QUEUEID)

Apr 18 00:00:20 mgate2 postfix/cleanup[92028]: 1A2C779788F: message-id=<11004180000.aa11...@example.org> (the Message-id: header is logged. This is a helpful unique message identifier when searching the logs for a specific message.)

Apr 18 00:00:20 mgate2 postfix/qmgr[95868]: 1A2C779788F: from=<>, size=382, nrcpt=1 (queue active) (envelope sender, size, number of recipients, which queue it's assigned to)

Apr 18 00:00:20 mgate2 postfix/smtpd[91955]: disconnect from private.webmail.vbhcs.org[192.168.70.47] (postfix has disconnected from the client. This line can be related to the "connect" line above by the smtpd process id, in this case "91955")

Apr 18 00:00:20 mgate2 postfix/local[94393]: 1A2C779788F: to=<njo...@example.org>, relay=local, delay=0.11, delays=0.05
/0.03/0/0.02, dsn=2.0.0, status=sent (delivered to maildir)
(the mail was delivered to a local user)

Apr 18 00:00:20 mgate2 postfix/qmgr[95868]: 1A2C779788F: removed
(postfix completed this message, and removed the queue file)


  -- Noel Jones

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