On Wed, Apr 27, 2022 at 01:46:01PM -0400, Haines Brown wrote: > Thanks for the clarifation. I changed it to histomat because I want > outgoing mail to appear to come from hai...@histomat.net.
OK! We're making progress now. Funny thing, though... I'm not sure that /etc/mailname actually does anything other than sit there looking cute. Reading farther along in <https://wiki.debian.org/EtcMailName>, it says: Exim (i.e. exim 3.x) doesn't read /etc/mailname at all. When you configure it, it prompts you for what it calls the "visible name" of the system. This is stored in /etc/mailname, and also used in a few places in the exim config file. But also: Failing to come up with something better exim4 (and mutt) use mailname to qualify recipients and therefore exim4 makes mailname a local domain. If people don't want that, they delete it from the list in the debconf dialog. I'm honestly not sure how to interpret that paragraph about exim4. They're using "local domain" as a technical term with a highly specific meaning, but it's something unique to exim4, and I don't use exim4 myself. What it *sounds* like is "the content of /etc/mailname will be used in the configuration dialog as a default value". In other words, changing the content of /etc/mailname won't do anything unless you then go through the next step of configuring exim4's "local domains", whatever those are. > However just > changing it does not fix my problem. *nod* > I may have to restart networking. > If this works I'll let the thread know. It won't. Networking has nothing to do with MTA configuration. > > YOU ARE NOT USING DEBIAN SO WE DON'T KNOW! > > I insist that the Devan operating system I use is identical to Debian > except for its lack of systemd. Its installation is identical to > that of Debian and all packages come from the Debian repository. You have already demonstrated that this is false. Your popcon package is sending its results to a different address than the Debian popcon package uses. This means the Devuan popcon package is different. Which means it's coming from a different repository. Devuan has *changes*. That's why you selected it. That also means that we, as users of Debian, may not know what all of those changes *are*. > In network setup during OS installation, if I recall > correctly, I'm asked for a) my host name and seprately for b) my > domain namer. It is entirely possible that when it asked for my domaiin name > that I entered lenin.histomat.net. None of that is important. What's important is configuring your MTA correctly. Which means you stop relying on what the installer did for you, and just fix things that need to be fixed. > But this seems unlikelyi because > my e-mail system has been working property until just a week ago. So, something changed a week ago. Did *you* change something? If so, what? If not, then perhaps your smarthost's configuration was changed. Did your smarthost administrator send you any notifications of changes? Anything like that? Or did they just pull the rug out from under you? > > unicorn:~$ host histomat.net > > histomat.net has address 216.239.138.216 > > histomat.net mail is handled by 10 postoffice.omnis.com. > > > > unicorn:~$ host postoffice.omnis.com. > > postoffice.omnis.com has address 216.239.133.242 > > postoffice.omnis.com has IPv6 address 2607:fe90:1:1::1c > > > > The similarity in the two IPv4 addresses catches my attention. It looks > > like this histomat.net domain name is "owned by" (or at least handled by) > > the same people who own/handle postoffice.omnis.com. > > > > I'm guessing that person isn't you. You don't seem to know enough to be > > running an Internet domain. > > That is correct. I am not an IT person. My public IP address is indeed > 216.239.138.216. Oh, that's interesting. So histomat.net points to your machine. > I assume it is assigned by my ISP. My ISP is Onnis. Ahhhhh. > My mail service is also provided by Omnis. Would that explain the > similarity of the IP addresses? Yes. > > So, that begs the question of why you think it's appropriate to announce > > yourself as histomat.net in your outgoing communications. > > By "announce" do you refer to my domain name? I'm talking about the envelope sender address and the From: header address of your outgoing emails. (Brian also mentioned the HELO address, but that usually isn't important.) Re-read your original error message. The one where your exim MTA reported that your smarthost had rejected the message. Keep staring at it until understanding occurs. > Are you asking why I use > histomat.net as my domain name? That is because it is my domain name. It points to your machine, so that sounds correct. What does it mean that the domain name points to your machine? It means that you can use it for *incoming* email. Other people, trying to send email to you, will be able to use that domain name to reach you. Well, they *would* be able to use it to reach you, except... unicorn:~$ host histomat.net histomat.net has address 216.239.138.216 histomat.net mail is handled by 10 postoffice.omnis.com. Your DNS tells them to send mail to postoffice.omnis.com instead of directly to you. This domain name has no effect on your outgoing mail. > I had my ISP create a simple alias for the domain name > historicalmateiralism.info. It has the same IP address as hstomat.net. Typos again. unicorn:~$ host historicalmaterialism.info historicalmaterialism.info has address 216.239.138.216 historicalmaterialism.info mail is handled by 10 postoffice.omnis.com. Once more, email to this domain is directed to postoffice.omnis.com. Neither of these domains has any effect on your outgoing mail configuration. > I presume that by "outgoing mail relay" you refer to the mail service > provided by my ISP. I understand that it will reject > r...@lenin.histomat.net because my hostname is not part of my domain > name. > > I have no idea off hand how to test if mail sent from > r...@histomat.net will get through. You'd test it by actually sending some mail with that address as the envelope sender. There are three ways you could test that: 1) Reconfigure exim4 to use histomat.net as the default right-hand side of the email address, restart exim4 if needed (I have no idea), and then send another mail from root. 2) Inject a message into exim's mail queue locally with an overridden envelope sender address. I don't know if exim4 provides a simple way to do that. If all else fails, you could invoke /usr/sbin/sendmail directly with the -f option. > All I can think of is telnet. 3) Use telnet to connect directly to your smarthost and send a message by manually typing the SMTP commands. After whatever authentication commands are required, if any. I'd speculate that #2 is going to be the easiest for you. Something like this ought to suffice: printf 'From: r...@histomat.net\nSubject: test\nDate: 27 Apr 2022 12:00:00 -0000\n\nHello world.\n' | /usr/sbin/sendmail -oi -oem -fr...@histomat.net SOME@ADDRESS where SOME@ADDRESS is any external email address you have (yahoo mail, hotmail, gmail, whatever). > don't know whether mail has an option to define the sender. Perhaps I > could log in as root and send mail That would be option #1 in my list -- reconfigure exim and then try sending mail from a root login shell. I'm not the person to help you reconfigure exim though. > I know from past success that it will accept mail from haines@histomat > (and from bro...@historicalmaterialism.info) Past as in before the changes that occurred a week ago? Might be worth re-testing that. > > (Also, what is mail.guardedhost.com? I still never saw an answer to that.) > > Sorry. I thought I made it clear that this (with port appended) is the > address required by my ISP's mail server. So it's your smarthost? You configured exim to use this as your smarthost? That confirms my interpretation of the error message that you showed us. The smarthost rejected the message, and exim generated the error message to tell you what had happened. It wasn't the most crystal clear error message I've ever seen, but it's better than average. Anyway, test whether mail from hai...@histomat.net still works, and if so, read exim docs until you figure out how to configure exim to use that as the default right-hand side of generated outgoing email addresses.
