lost input channel

[Mike Loiterman]

I'm getting a lot of these types of errors in my maillog file:

lost input channel from xxx.xxx.org [111.111.111.111] to MTA after rcpt

There will be periods of time that mail delivers normally, and then
there will be periods of time when I get lots of those errors.

Also, there are several (5 or so) sendmail processess running at the
same time.

I have tried stoping sendmail, killing all processess and restarting it,
but the problem persists.

I run my domain off of a dynamic DNS server (dns2go) and my dns just
changed...could this be the problem...the new IP has not propagated
through yet?

sendmail 8.11.6
FreeBSD 4.4

--
Mike Loiterman

[Andrew Choi]

Hi,

I got many 'lost input channel' message with my two sendmail server,too.
Anyone Can help!

Andrew Choi

"Mike Loiterman" <j...@hotmail.com> ???
news:MPG.1b5c41d4e...@news.covad.net ???...

[Per Hedeland]

In article <MPG.1b5c41d4e...@news.covad.net> Mike Loiterman

<j...@hotmail.com> writes:
>I'm getting a lot of these types of errors in my maillog file:
>
>lost input channel from xxx.xxx.org [111.111.111.111] to MTA after rcpt

The most common cause of this message by far in today's e-mail world is
spamware that simply drops the connection on any error ("User unknown",
"Relaying denied", whatever).

>There will be periods of time that mail delivers normally, and then
>there will be periods of time when I get lots of those errors.

Try to examine the "lost input channel" cases in more detail - do they
appear to concern legitimate mail? You have the sending host in the
message above, and if it's "after rcpt" you should also have some
'from=' and 'to=' entries for the message in question (look for lines
with the same "queue ID"). If that info indicates that it's legitimate
mail, you may have cause for concern, otherwise not.

The timing thing could simply be a matter of periodic "spam attacks" -
what you need to check is if the "mail delivers normally" is from/for
the *same* hosts/users that fails at other points in time. The FAQ lists
some cases of networking problems that may cause errors like these (see
e.g. Q3.10 and the others it refers to) - but those will typically
happen either in the initial handshake or during DATA, not "after rcpt".

>I run my domain off of a dynamic DNS server (dns2go) and my dns just
>changed...could this be the problem...the new IP has not propagated
>through yet?

No, that just means that your mail will a) not reach your server and b)
possibly be sent somewhere else - in neither case will anything appear
in your logs. SMTP to a dynamic IP address can't really be done reliably
unless you have a hook into the address assignment.

--Per Hedeland
p...@hedeland.org