I'm Lost... QMail / Webmin Issues

[Katixa]

Hi there,

I would need some help with something that I don't know how to handle.

We have a dedicated server and started creating some client accounts. We have Plesk 7.5 for client/domain/email administration and I use Webmin for system configuration.

I set up some cron jobs, and some scheduled backups.

We named our server as "servidor.org" to try solving some issues when sending mail from PHP scripts (in the first days, when testing things), although that is NOT our domain. The server has a dedicated and a shared IP, but there is no domain directly related to it. Anyway, for Plesk the host name is "localhost.localdomain". But "me" for QMail is "servidor.org".

Now I see that my QMail Queue has 101 messages. All for addresses like:
postmaster@Servidor.org
root@Servidor.org

And "From" addresses like:
DrWEB-DAEMON@Servidor.org
anonymous@Servidor.org

These are messages about cron jobs done, services down alert, etc.. and some re-directed spam and anti-virus alerts.

All, of course, with error message about the bounce that bounced.

I understand that this is due to not configuring correctly all this hostname, etc...

So now I don't know where to start from... I looked into Webmin but saw no option to change this. I see that inside QMail configuration, in aliases, there are three emails: mailer-daemon, postmaster and root. I changed the "alias to" entry and set it to my own e-mail address, but nothing happened.

Our domain mail addresses are now hosted there (the website is on a Windows host).

What could I do? I just want to receive all those emails in my account. Have the server name configured correctly.

Ah, there are also messages from webmin that are sent to "webmin@themovie" (alerts about service from Webmin). I don't know where "Themovie" comes from, but is our company name...

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Regards.

[murphy_young]

If you install qmail from source, then:

cd /var/qmail/alias

and edit/insert your email address in each file:

.qmail-mailer-daemon
.qmail-postmaster
.qmail-root

then reload qmail:

/var/qmail/bin/qmailctl reload

[Katixa]

If you install qmail from source, then:

cd /var/qmail/alias

and edit/insert your email address in each file:

.qmail-mailer-daemon
.qmail-postmaster
.qmail-root

then reload qmail:

/var/qmail/bin/qmailctl reload

Hi,

Thanks for the reply.

I have tried to edit those files. First I did a backup of them. It was strange but the format of the file was the following:

&mail@address.com

I deleted the "&" symbol and restarted QMail. Then checked Aliases in Webmin and all seemed to continue OK (well I had the ".bak" files too but that does not matter I guess.

The strange thing is that after I restarted QMail, I received an email from "webmin@themovie" in my mail address... telling that the QMail service was down. (And I was not receiving Webmin reports before).

I am very confused about all this....

Maybe I don't understand this at all but... If I'm right when configuring that mailer-daemon@<all-domains> Alias to my mail address, it just means that ALL mails sent to mailer-daemon user, regardless of the domain, are sent to my mail addres... is it? And the same to postmaster and root.

Should I have those alias?

I just want the server to send to ME the error messages, and not to the postmaster or root... but I don't know how or where to configure that.

[murphy_young]

&mail@address.com -------> to a real email address
&user ---------> to a local user

Yes, You should have those alias.
The first time you install qmail, you should have three alias:
.qmail-mailer-daemon
.qmail-postmaster
.qmail-root

[Katixa]

Hi again,

Ok... I changed that and set all the files to &mymail@address.com

Anyway today (8.50am) I've got 18 mail in queue. All for root and postmaster.

Some of them are spam that was sent to our customers, to an address that does not exist, like "info" or "sales", in their domain. The system is then trying to reply to the spam source (a common email), BUT these addresses use to say something like:

<name@domainname.com>:
216.200.xxx.xx does not like recipient.
Remote host said: 550 Recipient Rejected: Excessive resource consumption
Giving up on 216.200.xxx.xx.

And of course this last message is sent to the postmaster@Servidor.org.

So I receive (in the server mail queue) the original mail, the reply to that person, and the reply from that server.

Maybe I should just configure all the domains in another way so instead of replying with "This addres does not longer accept mail", I could just redirect the mail to another address. Or maybe not?

And the messages for root are stats or something about FTP connections, IPs, logs, etc...

Why don't I receive the mails if I have assigned those alias?

Is the "localhost.localdomain" well assigned under Plesk or should I put another name?

Is the "Servidor.org" well assigned in QMail if that domain is not ours or should I set something else? If so.. what?

Thanks again.

PS: By the way... I just noticed that everytime I delete all the queue (selecting all the messages and then deleting them), the QMail SMTP Service goes down...

[murphy_young]

I made a mistake:
This is wrong:
&mail@address.com -------> to a real email address
&user ---------> to a local user

This is right:
mail@address.com -------> to a real email address
&user ---------> to a local user

so change:
&mymail@address.com
to
mymail@address.com

[Katixa]

I made a mistake:
This is wrong:
&mail@address.com -------> to a real email address
&user ---------> to a local user

This is right:
mail@address.com -------> to a real email address
&user ---------> to a local user

so change:
&mymail@address.com
to
mymail@address.com

Thanks for your help murphy, but... still nothing


The messages continue going to the mail queue.

[murphy_young]

I don't use webmin or Plesk so I can't say what to do there.
Maybe it's a dns problem or maybe it's not.
DId you reload qmail after you made the change?
How did you install qmail?

[Katixa]

I don't use webmin or Plesk so I can't say what to do there.
Maybe it's a dns problem or maybe it's not.
DId you reload qmail after you made the change?
How did you install qmail?

This is a dedicated server we acquired from a hosting company.
It came with FC1 preinstalled. Then we purchased license for Plesk that is managed by this same company.

Then I just simply created the domains, mailnames, etc... and changed each domain DNS in the registrar. The domains are working, the email is working, but these emails simply do not get out of the server. Is like if it does not know what to do with them... From: DrWeb ... To: postmaster...

Tomorrow I will talk with my boss and see if I can "play" a bit with the host name, to see what happens. I proposed him to put a name to the server and register its IP under something like "subdomain.domain.com" in the Internet.

Thanks again... I will try to keep update of this.