Random mail bounce problem
Mark Fletcher
We've come across a puzzling mail problem. Mail to my account sometimes
bounces(maybe once every 50-100 messages). The machine where my mail
lives is currently at IRIX 5.2, but the mail started bouncing when the
machine was still at IRIX 4.0.5H(the machine is an Indigo R3000). All of
our other machines are still at various forms of 4.0.5. I'm including two
things below from last night, the last time this happened. In this
example, a cron job had mailed to root, which is aliased to me. The
original message bounced, causing a bounce message to be sent to the
sender, which was the cron job ala root which, again, is aliased to me.
And I received the bounce message. The first thing included below is the
bounce message header. The second thing is the SYSLOG output of sendmail
during that time.
We run NIS and NFS and I do not forward my mail anywhere.
I have a call in to the TAC, but I was wondering if anyone else has had
this problem.
Any help(specifically, what "unknown mailer error 8" is) would be greatly
appreciated!
Mark
(some info: my account is fletcher. The machine my mail lives on is
called data. All our mail gets routed through the machine chekhov, and
the cron job was running on the machine photon)
The bounce message header is:
***** UNDELIVERABLE MAIL sent to fletcher, being returned by data!fletcher ****
mail: Error # 8 'Invalid recipient' encountered on system data
Received: from chekhov.photon.com by data.photon.com via SMTP (931110.SGI/930416.SGI)
for fletcher id AA11172; Wed, 8 Jun 94 00:05:49 -0700
Received: from photon.photon.com by chekhov.photon.com via SMTP (931110.SGI.ANONFTP/931108.SGI.ANONFTP)
for flet...@data.photon.com id AA26963; Wed, 8 Jun 94 00:05:47 -0700
Received: by photon.photon.com (931110.SGI.ANONFTP/931108.SGI.ANONFTP)
for flet...@data.photon.com id AA12905; Wed, 8 Jun 94 00:05:45 -0700
Date: Wed, 8 Jun 94 00:05:45 -0700
From: ro...@photon.com (Super-User)
Message-Id: <940608070...@photon.photon.com>
To: root@photon
Subject: cron output
And the SYSLOG messages(on machine data) are:
Jun 8 00:06:24 6C:data sendmail[11180]: AA11180: message-id=<940608070...@data.photon.com>
Jun 8 00:06:24 6C:data sendmail[11180]: AA11180: from=photon.com!root, size=1068, class=0, received from local
Jun 8 00:06:24 6C:data sendmail[11181]: AA11180: Connecting to (local)...
Jun 8 00:06:25 6C:data sendmail[11174]: AA11172: to=<flet...@data.photon.com>, delay=00:00:36, stat=unknown mailer error 8
Jun 8 00:06:25 6C:data sendmail[11181]: AA11180: to=fletcher, delay=00:00:03, stat=Sent
Jun 8 00:06:26 6C:data sendmail[11181]: AA11180: Connecting to photon.com (ether)...
Jun 8 00:06:26 6C:data sendmail[11174]: AA11174: message-id=<940608070...@data.photon.com>
Jun 8 00:06:26 6C:data sendmail[11174]: AA11174: from=MAILER-DAEMON, size=0, class=0, received from chekhov.photon.com (192.203.79.10)
Jun 8 00:06:26 6C:data sendmail[11174]: AA11174: Connecting to (local)...
Jun 8 00:06:26 6C:data sendmail[11174]: AA11174: to=fletcher, delay=00:00:00, stat=Sent
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Mark Fletcher
Photon Research Associates Bus: (619) 455-9741
La Jolla, Ca Fax: (619) 455-0658
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dave Olson
| We've come across a puzzling mail problem. Mail to my account sometimes
| bounces(maybe once every 50-100 messages). The machine where my mail
| lives is currently at IRIX 5.2, but the mail started bouncing when the
| machine was still at IRIX 4.0.5H(the machine is an Indigo R3000). All of
| our other machines are still at various forms of 4.0.5. I'm including two
| things below from last night, the last time this happened. In this
| example, a cron job had mailed to root, which is aliased to me. The
| original message bounced, causing a bounce message to be sent to the
| sender, which was the cron job ala root which, again, is aliased to me.
| And I received the bounce message. The first thing included below is the
| bounce message header. The second thing is the SYSLOG output of sendmail
| during that time.
|
| We run NIS and NFS and I do not forward my mail anywhere.
|
| I have a call in to the TAC, but I was wondering if anyone else has had
| this problem.
I'd guess you have an NFS mounted home dir, or that you are an NIS
user (+fletcher in passwd, or just +), and that you have intermittent
network problems.
|
| Any help(specifically, what "unknown mailer error 8" is) would be greatly
| appreciated!
Unknown user (i.e., not in passwd or NIS passwd map, or no home dir
found):
=========
Ever get a mail bounce containing one of those ubiquitous "unknown mailer
error" messages and wonder what it meant? If so, you may find the following
list of error returns from /bin/mail helpful:
#define E_FLGE 1 /* flge error */
#define E_FILE 2 /* file error */
#define E_SPACE 3 /* no space */
#define E_FRWD 4 /* cannot forward */
#define E_SYNTAX 5 /* syntax error */
#define E_FRWL 6 /* forwarding loop */
#define E_SNDR 7 /* invalid sender */
#define E_USER 8 /* invalid user */
#define E_FROM 9 /* too many From lines */
#define E_PERM 10 /* bad permissions */
#define E_MBOX 11 /* mbox problem */
#define E_TMP 12 /* temporary file problem */
#define E_DEAD 13 /* Cannot create dead.letter */
#define E_UNBND 14 /* Unbounded forwarding */
#define E_LOCK 15 /* cannot create lock file */
#define E_GROUP 16 /* no group id of 'mail' */
#define E_MEM 17 /* malloc failure */
#define E_FORK 18 /* could not fork */
#define E_PIPE 19 /* could not pipe */
#define E_OWNR 20 /* invoker does not own mailfile */
#define E_SMAIL 21 /* can't call sendmail */
=========
--
The most beautiful things in the world are | Dave Olson
those from which all excess weight has been | Silicon Graphics
removed. -Henry Ford | ol...@sgi.com