RE: System i mail server not properly identifying itself -- MIDRANGE-L

In most cases the "right" way is to have the i5 deliver just like your PCs.

go into your PC email client software and check what is set up there for for
the outgoing email server. Use that.

But, if it requires authentication, you may be hosed without a 3rd party
product.

Reverse DNS doesn't care what your machine identifies itself as. It cares
what the public IP that connects to it resolves to as far as a domain name
(it really could be anything I believe).

so your i5 sends mail to a yahoo.com account. IT connects to yahoo's mail
server. Yahoo's mail server says "oh, I see that IP address xx.xx.xx.xx
just connected, now lets do a RDNS lookup... oh... no domain set up for
RDNS.. sorry.. bye bye".

your host name, internal i5 IP, etc most likely has nothing to do with any
of it. I am assuming you're using NAT behind some sort of firewall, so that
public IP is probably the one that the external mail server will see.

Bradley V. Stone
BVSTools - www.bvstools.com
eRPG SDK - www.erpgsdk.com

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jeff Crosby
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2008 3:06 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: Re: System i mail server not properly identifying itself

Hi Brad,

I'm the entire IT dept. There ain't no email admin guys and
there ain't
no corporate. <g> The Network Guy is a consultant who helps me with
issues like this.

The SMTP attributes are MAILROUTER(*NONE) and FIREWALL(*NO) because the
system i sends email directly. Does this mean I need to go
out to godaddy
and do something? I really don't want to expose
i5.dilgardfoods.com as an
entity on the internet. The MX record out there is
mail.dilgardfoods.com. It seems to me the 'right' way to fix
this is for
the System i to identify itself (for email purposes) properly as
mail.dilgardfoods.com..

Thanks.

Bradley V. Stone wrote:

Jeff,

The RDNS is right. Aren't you using a mail router? Normally
your iSeries
passes the email off to your corporate mail router (just like
your PCs do)
and from there it's taken care of as your mail router should have a RDNS
already set up.

When sending mail you can treat the i5 like a PC (and set up a
mail router
in CHGSMTPA and set FIREWALL to *YES) or you can have it deliver mail
"directly" in which case the public IP address that it connects to remote
systems with should be set up with RDNS. But, I bet this isn't the case.

Talk you your email admin guys.. ask them for the name of the mail router
you should be using for mail delivery. It doesn't matter it's
an i5. It's
sending mail. When you get that, use CHGSMTPA to put in the mail router,
change FIREWALL to *YES and stop and restart SMTP and you should
be golden
(ass-u-ming you have good luck with the IBM SMTP server).

Bradley V. Stone
BVSTools - www.bvstools.com
eRPG SDK - www.erpgsdk.com

-----Original Message-----
From: midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:midrange-l-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jeff Crosby
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2008 2:38 PM
To: Midrange Systems Technical Discussion
Subject: System i mail server not properly identifying itself

The System i is our mail server. We have a particular domain
(msdsc.org) we cannot email to. We get (after a good hour or so) the
following:

NOT ABLE TO DELIVER MAIL TO SOME/ALL RECIPIENTS.
REPLY CODES WITH FIRST DIGIT = '4' OR '5' ARE ERROR REPLIES.
ERRORS THAT DO NOT HAVE ERROR REPLY CODES MAY EXIST.

HOST I5 NOT ABLE TO DELIVER MAIL TO FOLLOWING RECIPIENT(S):
<xxxxx@xxxxxxxxx>
RETRIES EXHAUSTED WHILE ATTEMPTING TO CONNECT TO REMOTE HOST msdsc.

** TEXT OF MAIL FOLLOWS **
Received: from [192.168.0.35]([192.168.0.35])
by I5.DILGARDFOODS.COM (IBM i5/OS SMTP V05R04M00) with TCP;
Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:07:56 -0500
Message-ID: <47C7068B.40304@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 28 Feb 2008 14:07:55 -0500
From: Jeff Crosby <xxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.12 (Windows/20080213)
MIME-Version: 1.0
To: xxxxx@xxxxxxxxx
Subject: Test
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

The tech guy at msdsc.org says it's a reverse DNS issue. I got our
Network Guy in (who does not understand System i) and he determined the
System i was not properly identifying itself. He determined that from
the following PC session:

220 Ready
helo i5.dilgardfoods.com
554 Connection refused: Connecting client IP doesn't match the host it
claimed to be
during HELO. Failed to find any correlation between the claimed host
(i5.dilgardfoods.com) and the connecting IP (63.xxx.xxx.xxx).

I ass-u-me this is because the System i is identifying itself as
i5.dilgardfoods.com which is not valid outside our LAN. As a mail
server, it is known in the world as mail.dilgardfoods.com. Is the
answer that the System i smtp server must somehow identify itself as
mail.dilgardfoods.com? If so, I could not find anywhere in CHGSMTPA or
iNav where this could be done. In CFGTCP I have both
i5.dilgardfoods.com and mail.dilgardfoods.com under 192.168.0.1.

Thanks for any help.

--
Jeff Crosby
UniPro Foodservice/Dilgard
260-422-7531
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my
company. Unless I say so.

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--
Jeff Crosby
UniPro Foodservice/Dilgard
260-422-7531
Opinions expressed are my own and not necessarily those of my
company. Unless I say so.
--
This is the Midrange Systems Technical Discussion (MIDRANGE-L)
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