Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender

Support
1

I am getting:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

root@xxx-xxx (sic!)
Unrouteable address

But the “Mail deliver failed” messages get successfully forwarded from the root address.

It looks like the root address is truncated for service test emails as other messages are getting through.

Philip

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: nobody@xxx-xxx
To: root@xxx-xxx
Cc:
Bcc:
Date: Wed, 14 Aug 2019 06:24:33 +0000
Subject: [Sympl] Service test report
= Sympl service test report ============================================

Tests conducted on xxx-xxx.
Tests started at 2019-08-14T05:50:01+00:00.

  • apache2: PASSED
  • clamav-dovecot: PASSED
  • clamav-freshclam: PASSED
  • cron: PASSED
  • dovecot: PASSED
  • exim4: PASSED
  • incrond: PASSED
  • mysqld: PASSED
  • pure-ftpd: PASSED
  • spamassassin: PASSED
  • sshd: PASSED

Tests finished at 2019-08-14T06:24:33+00:00.

= End of service test report ===========================================

2

I’m getting some of these messages too, though not for the service test report.

I’ve set the forward file to contain deliver webmaster@domain.tld and those emails are being received correctly.

3

My last mail delivery failed email was 21:09 Tuesday, not aware of anything that’s changed around that time. Can’t see any changes in the dpkg log for unattended package installs.

4

I’ve double-checked, and no changes were made to Sympl which would explain this directly.

If an incomplete change was made to the server hostname it could possibly trigger this, but I’d have to look into it further.

@aye_philip: Are you still seeing this now?

1 Like
5

Thank you for looking into this. Yes I had a couple of returns last Friday, lurking in the spam box.

On first setup, you may remember I experienced some problems with email delivery, which you had kindly looked into. The lack of reverse DNS was one issue and another that required updates to sympl, at which point I think you switched me to stretch-testing, which I am still on, I don’t think I set it to testing.

Later - some time later - I noticed that messages posted by backup2l from root@ were not coming through.

It was at that point I spotted a new directory in /srv/xx.xxx.xx.xxx based on the server IP address, alongside the /srv/xxx.vs.mythic-beasts.com one. Assuming this was related to the reverse DNS I tried adding the forward file in mailboxes/root, which now works. I’ve never seen a similar directory automatically created in symbiosis and probably should have asked sooner …

What do you think?

6

I suspect there’s some discrepancy with the hostname, and the old Symbiosis code to determine hostnames is inconsistent.

I’ll have a look at expanding the Sympl parser with functionality ‘properly’ set the hostname, but in the meantime, check that /etc/hosts /etc/hostname /etc/mailname and the links in /etc/ssl/ are all correct, and hostname -f returns the correct name.

7

Aha, yes the hostname took on the ip address.

I will see if the messages start to come through now.

Presuming I can safely delete that /srv/xx.xxx.etc site?

Many thanks

8

Yes, assuming everything is set up right, and nothing is explicitly pointing at it (ie: stuff in /etc/ssl/) you should be okay to remove it. You may want to move it out of the way somewhere just in case, and make sure everything comes up as expected after a reboot.

1 Like