[Techtalk] help with bouncing mails-- solved

Sun Sep 18 00:06:25 UTC 2011

I'm top-posting on purpose, in case anyone wants to review the original
long message. I think I have it sorted out. Alvin made good suggestions
on stuff to look for. Little Girl asked

"> To: misformatted and direct-to-MX X-Spam-Flag: NO    
Does misformatted indicate anything specific?"

That's one of those funny Spamassassin statements that could be more
precise. Since it says No, and we're not filtering with SA anyway, it's
not significant. Elwing suggested DNS problems, and she was right. This
was one of those situations that led to one weird thing after another.
The original problem was someone trying to send mail to my friend
Diana, and it got bounced with this unhelpful message:

> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
> <diana at dianagaydon.com>
>    mail undeliverable for 2 hours  

As Elwing noted, the message never reached the dianagaydon.com server
because if it had, there would have been a section starting with >>>
and it would have said something about the server at dianagaydon.com
rejecting the message, and there would have been a numerical SMTP error
code. It wasn't really bounced, because it couldn't find the server.

I always fire up good ole telnet to test SMTP, POP3, and IMAP servers.
For TLS/SSL sessions use openssl s_client. So I sent a bunch of
messages with telnet and everyone got through. So that says the server
is OK.

So then I started looking at DNS. I've gotten lazy in my old age, so
after poking around some with dig, and finding problems, I use
http://www.dnssy.com/  to run batches of tests. The parent domain to
dianagaydon.com is bratgrrl.com, which I control, and it was using the
wrong nameservers. So I fixed that. Then I looked at my ISP
nameservers, and what a mess. One of them is dead and the
other one has a number of problems. So I changed my home router to
query Google public DNS, and suddenly my Internet is way faster and
smoother. I have a 1.5mb/512kb ADSL account, which isn't a rocket but
should be fine for normal Web surfing, but it's always been laggy, and
streaming video never worked right. Now streaming is smooth and
everything is faster.

I still don't know why the original failed message to Diana, which
started all this, didn't get delivered. Hundreds of spams have no
trouble finding her. I don't know if fixing bratgrrl.com helped
anything. 

But it all works now :)

Carla

On Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:48:13 -0700
Carla Schroder <carla at bratgrrl.com> wrote:

> 
> Help O Gurus.
> 
> I control bratgrrl.com on a little reseller hosting account, and one
> of my customers is dianagaydon.com. dianagaydon.com uses
> bratgrrl.com's servers. 
> 
> Both domains are bouncing emails, but not consistently. Some get
> through. I do not have access to mail server logs. I can telnet in to
> port 25 on both bratgrrl.com and dianagaydon.com and
> successfully send messages. But anything going through external SMTP
> servers may or may not make it. There is no filtering of any kind on
> dianagaydon.com, no spam filters, redirects, forwards, nothing.
> 
> I don't see anything helpful in the headers of the
> bounced messages, so maybe one of you brainiacs can spot a clue in
> this example. The error message tells me nothing:
> 
> 
> Return-path: <>
> Envelope-to: carla at bratgrrl.com
> Delivery-date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:20:42 -0500
> Received: from redcondor.ortelco.net ([67.215.45.8]:36642)
>  by capital.wznoc.com with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
>  id 1R4fpu-00018T-Af
>  for carla at bratgrrl.com; Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:20:42 -0500
> Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:48:34 +0000
> MIME-Version: 1.0
> Message-ID: <2.4.1316198914558 at localhost>
> Content-Type: multipart/report; report-type=delivery-status;
> charset=us-ascii; boundary=___BoUnDaRy_1316198914559.914.6727011216019
> To: carla at bratgrrl.com
> From: Mailer Daemon <postmaster at redcondor.ortelco.net>
> Subject: Undeliverable: Re: test7-friday
> X-RC-Original-Recipients: [[<diana at dianagaydon.com>]]
> X-RC-Original-Message-ID: <20110916094514.78ba0e9e at xena.alrac.net>
> X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.5
> X-Spam-Score: 5
> X-Spam-Bar: /
> X-Ham-Report: Spam detection software, running on the system
> "capital.wznoc.com", has identified this incoming email as possible
> spam.  The original message has been attached to this so you can view
> it (if it isn't spam) or label similar future email.  If you have any
> questions, see no for details.
>  Content preview:  The attached message could not be delivered to the
> recipients listed below. The original message was rejected at Fri, 16
> Sep 2011 18:48:34 +0000 ----- The following addresses had permanent
> fatal errors ----- <diana at dianagaydon.com> mail undeliverable for 2
> hours [...] Content analysis details:   (0.5 points, 6.0 required)
>  pts rule name              description
>  ---- ----------------------
> -------------------------------------------------- -1.9
> BAYES_00               BODY: Bayes spam probability is 0 to 1% [score:
> 0.0000] 0.9 RAZOR2_CHECK           Listed in Razor2
> (http://razor.sf.net/) 1.4 TO_NO_BRKTS_DIRECT     To: misformatted and
> direct-to-MX X-Spam-Flag: NO
> 
> The attached message could not be delivered to the recipients listed
> below.
> 
> The original message was rejected at Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:48:34 +0000
> 
> ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors -----
> <diana at dianagaydon.com>
>    mail undeliverable for 2 hours
> 
> Received: from mail.ortelco.net ([67.215.45.3])
>           by redcondor.ortelco.net
> ({1d827eda-42b1-4ecd-a71d-75ebaeaa5c76}) via TCP (outbound) with
> ESMTPS id 20110916164514009 for <diana at dianagaydon.com>;
>           Fri, 16 Sep 2011 16:45:14 +0000
> X-RC-FROM: <carla at bratgrrl.com>
> X-RC-RCPT: <diana at dianagaydon.com>
> Received: from xena.alrac.net (ip-173-224-187-193.syringanetworks.net
> [173.224.187.193]) by mail.ortelco.net (8.13.1/8.13.1) with ESMTP id
> p8GGj7o9011599 for <diana at dianagaydon.com>; Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:45:08
> -0700 Date: Fri, 16 Sep 2011 09:45:14 -0700
> From: Carla Schroder <carla at bratgrrl.com>
> To: Diana Gaydon <diana at dianagaydon.com>
> Subject: Re: test7-friday
> Message-ID: <20110916094514.78ba0e9e at xena.alrac.net>
> In-Reply-To: <54D95C8B-6B08-4313-B0E1-7501C95B67FB at dianagaydon.com>
> References: <20110915223359.64bde322 at xena.alrac.net>
>  <54D95C8B-6B08-4313-B0E1-7501C95B67FB at dianagaydon.com>
> X-Mailer: Claws Mail 3.7.9 (GTK+ 2.24.4; i486-pc-linux-gnu)
> Mime-Version: 1.0
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
> Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
> 
> 
> 
> test7-friday
> 

-- 
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shiny new "Book of Audacity" is here!
http://bookofaudacity.com

Linux Cookbook
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596006402/
Linux Networking Cookbook
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596102487/
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~