I've been having an ongoing problem with mail delivery, and I'm stumped. I've
searched the list archives, and haven't been able to find an answer...hopefully
one of you can point me in the right direction.
My home network is setup with a machine, ariel.hisword.net, that acts as a
firewall and mailhost for my internal private network. My "main" desktop
machine is ezekiel.hisword.net, but it has no direct connection to the Internet
(it connects to the Internet thru ariel). All mail is received by ariel, and
then mail addressed to thoover is forwarded to ezekiel.
The problem is this...every few days, ariel cannot connect to ezekiel. Here's
a snippet from my mail.log when this happens:
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.075740 starting delivery 744: msg 55634 to
remote [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.077265 status: local 1/10 remote 2/20
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.117424 delivery 744: deferral:
Sorry,_I_wasn't_able_to_establish_an_SMTP_connection._(#4.4.1)/
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.118819 status: local 1/10 remote 1/20
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.256362 new msg 55632
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.259617 info msg 55632: bytes 1588 from
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> qp 4617 uid 64010
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.477456 starting delivery 745: msg 55632 to
local [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.479578 status: local 2/10 remote 1/20
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.481258 delivery 743: success:
did_0+1+0/qp_4617/
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.483973 status: local 1/10 remote 1/20
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.487246 end msg 55641
Feb 12 20:56:41 ariel qmail: 982032998.872603 new msg 55637
Feb 12 20:56:42 ariel qmail: 982032998.874282 info msg 55637: bytes 1699 from
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> qp 4621 uid 1000
Feb 12 20:56:42 ariel qmail: 982032999.123494 delivery 745: success:
did_0+1+0/qp_4621/
Feb 12 20:56:42 ariel qmail: 982032999.124884 status: local 0/10 remote 1/20
Feb 12 20:56:42 ariel qmail: 982032999.126232 starting delivery 746: msg 55637 to
remote [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Feb 12 20:56:42 ariel qmail: 982032999.127009 status: local 0/10 remote 2/20
Feb 12 20:56:42 ariel qmail: 982032999.127716 end msg 55632
Feb 12 20:56:42 ariel qmail: 982032999.187387 delivery 746: deferral:
Sorry,_I_wasn't_able_to_establish_an_SMTP_connection._(#4.4.1)/
Feb 12 20:56:42 ariel qmail: 982032999.188806 status: local 0/10 remote 1/20
As you can see above, ariel is unable to establish an SMTP connection with
ezekiel, but continues to receive mail from the Internet. I've tried
restarting both qmail and bind on both machines when this happens, but it
doesn't help. If I just leave things alone, it will eventually start working
again (it may be 4-5 hrs, it may be 8-10 hrs, it may be 24 hrs, but it always
will start working again by itself).
When the problem is occuring, "telnet ezekiel 25" from ariel results in a
timeout, so it's apparent that they really cannot communicate during this time.
I assumed at this point that there was something happening on ezekiel that
caused it to fail to accept an SMTP connection, but a total reboot of ezekiel
made no difference.
Now here's the weird thing... I found that a reboot of ariel fixes things right
up. So, whatever is happening is a problem on ariel, which prevents it from
_connecting_ to the SMTP port on ezekiel (neither qmail nor telnet can
connect). Whatever it is will eventually "cure" itself, but then will occur
again a day or two later. A reboot "cures" the problem immediately.
I've been running Debian potato on both machines for several months. When I
was running potato on ezekiel, and RH 5.2 on ariel, the problem never occured.
It started sometime after installing potato on ariel.
Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks!
--
Tom Hoover N5NTM <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - http://www.hisword.net/tom
- checkout HisWord(tm) Palmtop Bible at the above URL -
------- finger [EMAIL PROTECTED] for PGP key --------
