10.4.3 breaks Mail Server

alex_blewitt - 08:39am Nov 2, 2005 PST

I just had a really hairy experience with my 10.4.3 Mac OSX Server upgrade. I used to host a number of mailboxes with entries such as mydomain.com and myotherdomain.com as virtual domains in the Postfix service.

I then upgraded to 10.4.3, and everything seemed fine. But then I realised that there wasn't any incoming mail ...

A test post from Yahoo! indicated that all of my mail addressed to the virtual domains was being thrown away, with messages like:

  
Nov  2 14:07:21 server postfix/lmtp[892]: 64521118014: to=<alex@example.com>,   
  relay=/var/imap/socket/lmtp[/var/imap/socket/lmtp],  
  delay=1,  
  status=bounced (host /var/imap/socket/lmtp[/var/imap/socket/lmtp] said:   
550-Mailbox unknown.  Either there is no mailbox associated with this   
550-name or you do not have authorization to see it.   
550 5.1.1 User unknown (in reply to RCPT TO command))

This isn't the same message as when I send to a non existant user (e.g. spam

example.com gives me a different error message) so this is a problem with Postfix delivering the message to Cyrus, which is hosting the imap service.

As a short-term workaround, I changed the postfix settings so that

example.com wasn't treated as a virtual domain but rather an alias for the local host. (I uncommented the virtual domain lines as well, because the Postifx documentation suggests having both is a bad idea.)

I've no idea what the problem was, but it really killed me trying to locate and source a fix to the problem. Apple really do provide a shoddy server, and as soon as I can migrate away from their Mail server and replace it with a decent (and more up-to-date) mail system that's not so prone to being spammed, the better ...

Mark as Read

evanmati - Nov 7, 2005 10:40 am (#1 Total: 4)

Posts: 1

Re: 10.4.3 breaks Mail Server

I can say that their mail and web features have really lagged behind those of solaris or recent linux builds. And the fact that they have no whitelisting feature is a big draw back. But I can also say that if you get anal on the General Relay and Filters tabs of Mail in Server Admin you can have great success at reducing spam by 98%. I could probably write an exhaustive pamphlet on just the Relay tab. You would be suprised how much spam will drop off. I am getting consistantly 89% to 99% spam reduction with the average being around 97 or 98%.

Any unix geek or Apple engineer want to colaborate with me on this pamphlet?

Evan

Knowledge Seeker - Nov 7, 2005 10:40 am (#2 Total: 4)

Posts: 2

Re: 10.4.3 breaks Mail Server

Hey Alex:

I am another user who has this problem - I changed the virtual stuff into the alias - the aliases dont work. I would appreciate any help - any which way I can get this f*#$% going ... before I debug ...

Thanks sundarr_aatt_gmail_ddoott_com (please replace the obvious while sending your reply)

Knowledge Seeker - Nov 9, 2005 3:22 pm (#3 Total: 4)

Posts: 2

Re: 10.4.3 breaks Mail Server

OK - got the thing to work - had to change the shortnames to shortname

yourdomain.com. I really wish this was listed somewhere. Hey Evan: You are absolutely right - a great deal of it goes away - I used to get nearly 130 emails during weekends but now only about 8-10; combined with sbl.spamhaus.org, it really is very good. But I wish there was a better interface though - for example, the CLAMAV updates are not uptodate - it keeps complaining in the logs that I have an outdated version. SPAMASSASSIN - I dont know if it at all learns from any public/private sites periodically - there is a checkbox which says it would ... :). Postfix itself is slowly becoming like sendmail - too many things to take care of before the damn thing runs - take for example creating an alias that refers to a bunch of users - you have to name your machine in one domain, list the other stuff in virtual ... I say, What? Didn't mean to make it a large scale rant ... there you go ! In general, I am a major apple afficionado though !!

Chris Pepper (apparently) - Dec 8, 2005 10:50 am (#4 Total: 4)

via email

Posts: 845

        Having seen this thread
<http://db.tidbits.com/tbtalk/tlkthrdfull.lasso?ThreadID=2768>, I
haven't upgraded my home server to 10.4.3 (it hosts a couple dozen
domains, with email). Can you all provide a bit more detail on your
problems & fixes?

        Was it just a matter of fully qualifying local recipients in
Postfix's virtusertable (easy enough now others have figured it out),
or is there more to upgrading to 10.4.3's mail server?

                                                Thanks,

                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

TidBITS TidBITS TidBITS Talk 10.4.3 breaks Mail Server

10.4.3 breaks Mail Server

Add a message