Dear Claus, et al,
we have a strange situation but let me explain the environment.
hop1 ) we have two incoming SMTP gateways running sendmail 8.15.1 on Solaris these servers are forwarding the incoming mails through the FW to an internal mail-gateway on port 18000 without the domain part in the e-mail. Don't blame me, this wasn't my idea and setup.
hop2) this is also Solaris on Sparc with sendmail 8.15.2
this servers accepts emails on port 18000 and forwards it on the same host but different sendmail instance to hop3 listening on port 25 also with sendmail 8.15.2
hop3 ) this finally delivers to internal Exchange
hop4 ) MS Exchange
Now it happens from time to time that we cannot resolve DNS for some certain domain names, primary this happens sometimes for some domains in China or Iran.
Now following happens. Someone sends an e-mail from outside to one (or more) recipient at us (IIASA) and another recipient at China. Such an e-mail will be accepted by hop1 and 2 but hangs in the queue when it should be forwarded to hop3. I could verify
the situation sending such an e-mail from my private server. In the mailq for server listening on port 18000 there I see a deferred mail and in the q-file I see the following lines
H??To: MAYER Hans <
hans.mayer@iiasa.ac.at>,
echo.noreply@lreis.ac.cn
H??From: Hans Mayer <
ha-mayer@ma.yer.at>
H??Subject: versuch an lreis.ac.cn
So my primary question, why is sendmail checking a domain name when it's not responsible at all ?
And then of course a second question pops up, why is hop1 accepting this e-mail ?
I am quite sure one needs some more detailed information to give an answer but I am happy to provide you with this.
Kind regards
Hans
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