strange glitch results in lost mail

[Evert Ford]

if you have a standard install of MailScanner you should have the file
/etc/MailScanner/rules/spam.whitelist.rules .  It is called from MailScanner
via:
Is Definitely Not Spam = /etc/MailScanner/rules/spam.whitelist.rules .

An example of a rule that would whitelist anything going to an internal
domain:
To:    *@myinternaldomain.com    yes
If you wanted to whitelist inbound mail to a specific user, you would do
something like:
To:    joe at myinternaldomain.com    yes

In the rules directory there is an excellent README and EXAMPLES file that
helps explain how to do this, by the way

Evert Ford
Information Analyst
Westone Laboratories
http://www.westone.com


  -----Original Message-----
  From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
Behalf Of Chris Yuzik
  Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 2:50 PM
  To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
  Subject: Re: strange glitch results in lost mail


  Hi Evert,

  Everything in my MailScanner.conf file looks ok from what I can tell. MTA
and Sendmail are as you show, and sendmail is in /usr/bin/sendmail.

  I haven't noticed anything particularly strange in the /var/log/maillog
file...but I'm not sure what I'm supposed to look for either. Any hints?

  I have added a crontab for
/usr/lib/opcenter/virtualhosting/MailQueueCleaner and set it to run every 5
minutes. Not sure if this will help anything or not. I read somewhere that
it might help, but certainly won't hurt anything.

  Where exactly do you whitelist the internal domains? Is that in
"/etc/MailScanner/spam.whitelist.rules"? I don't have this file on my system
and am not sure what format to use. Could you give me a couple of examples,
or point me to the right place in the docs for this?

  Thanks.
  Chris Yuzik


    ----- Original Message -----
    From: Evert Ford
    To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
    Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 11:36 AM
    Subject: Re: strange glitch results in lost mail


    since you aren't having any mail delivery problems when you start
sendmail outside of MailScanner, I'd suggest looking at your whitelist rules
and blacklist rules, and next I'd suggest looking for a configuration error
in MailScanner.conf.  I had a similar problem until I whitelisted the
internal domains I manage.

    in MailScanner.conf,  look at the following settings(just for starters):
    MTA = sendmail
    and
    Sendmail = /usr/sbin/sendmail
    if you are using a standard install path on Redhat 7.3 for sendmail

    also, are you seeing any errors in your maillog on the e-mails that
aren'd delivered?

    Evert Ford
    Information Analyst
    Westone Laboratories
    http://www.westone.com
      -----Original Message-----
      From: MailScanner mailing list [mailto:MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK]On
Behalf Of Chris Yuzik
      Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 11:54 AM
      To: MAILSCANNER at JISCMAIL.AC.UK
      Subject: strange glitch results in lost mail


      Hi everyone,

      I have SpamAssassin and MailScanner running on my RedHat 7.3 machine.
The server is running Ensim WEBppliance PRO 3.5.10. The server hosts about a
dozen domains. I run sendmail and procmail. Almost everything works great.
Almost.

      Mail from the outside world works as expected, gets scanned and scored
and so forth. I've got SA's threshold set to 5 and am running DCC and
Razor...in the two days I tested it over the weekend, it correctly
identified 99%+ of spam.

      My big problem is that sometimes mail from within the server never
arrives...never bounces...just goes to a black hole.

      I'll list some examples so it makes more sense:

      1) let's pretend that domain1.com and domain2.com are hosted on my
server. external1.com is not hosted on my server.
      2) steve at domain1.com and john at domain1.com can both sent to and receive
email from susan at external1.com just fine. dave at domain2.com and
scott at domain2.com can also sent to and receive email from
susan at external1.com to. Internal to the outside world works.
      3) steve at domain1.com can not email john at domain1.com and vice-versa.
Internal to internal is not working.
      4) it gets stranger. dave at domain2.com can send email to
scott at domain2.com, but not the other way around. If scott replies to dave's
message, then dave never gets the reply.

      As I said before, the message doesn't bounce or anything...it just
goes into a black hole and is never seen again.

      When I installed MailScanner, the documentation said I was supposed to
do the following (which is what I did):
      1) "service sendmail stop"
      2) "service MailScanner start"

      In an attempt to troubleshoot the problem, I tried the following:
      1) "service MailScanner stop"
      2) "service sendmail start"
      3) "service MailScanner start"

      Now everyone can email everyone else: internal<-> internal and
internal<->external just fine. Unfortunately, now nothing gets processed
through spamassassin.

      How do I go about fixing this?

      Please help.

      Regards,
      Chris Yuzik
---
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