Forgive me for the length of this...

Here's some clarification to the problem I'm having, and
what I had to do to fix it. My actions are temporary,
because I care more about stopping UCE than I do about the
RFC that requires you to accept envelopes with mail from:<>

I appreciate all your comments/suggestions. They inspired me
to do something I always tell my employees and friends to
do: Check your logs!

I was already closely monitoring the postfix logs. It seems
like I spend a lot of time doing that every day. What I
neglected to do was look at my iMail logs, so I could see
what was happening between the two boxes, if anything.

My mx record for my domains point to the address of the
postfix box. So when an undeliverable envelope leaves
postfix, and gets returned for any reason, it returns to
postfix. Then it's postfix's job to send the bounce back to
the end-user (iMail account). Postfix is doing it's job in
this situation, but it's sending a bounce message back to
iMail with a null sender address (mail from:<>). I don't know
why postfix is doing this. I'm sure I have a directive in my
main.cf that's causing this, but I have yet to find it.

I composed an email that looked like this originally...

mail from:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
rcpt to:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
etc, etc, etc

...and I sent it through postfix(spamstopper). The situation
would look very similar if I were using iMail as my smtp
server in my email client, or if i were sending to an
external domain through either one of my servers. My users
send through iMail, which forwards it to postfix using the
Gate Host directive. I've tried it each way, but I'm only
showing you this way:

Feb 27 10:05:11 spamstopper postfix/smtpd[23451]: connect from 
neo-jackson.neosmart.neosmart.com[192.168.1.69]
Feb 27 10:05:11 spamstopper postfix/smtpd[23451]: 48EAD167D5: 
client=neo-jackson.neosmart.neosmart.com[192.168.1.69]
Feb 27 10:05:11 spamstopper postfix/cleanup[23441]: 48EAD167D5: 
message-id=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Feb 27 10:05:11 spamstopper postfix/smtpd[23451]: disconnect from 
neo-jackson.neosmart.neosmart.com[192.168.1.69]
Feb 27 10:05:11 spamstopper postfix/qmgr[23431]: 48EAD167D5: 
from=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, size=676, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Feb 27 10:05:11 spamstopper postfix/smtp[23434]: 48EAD167D5: 
to=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, relay=63.144.217.11[63.144.217.11], 
delay=0, status=bounced (host 63.144.217.11[63.144.217.11] said: 550 
unknown user <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>)
Feb 27 10:05:11 spamstopper postfix/cleanup[23450]: BFD6C167E9: 
message-id=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Feb 27 10:05:11 spamstopper postfix/qmgr[23431]: BFD6C167E9: from=<>, 
size=2466, nrcpt=1 (queue active)
Feb 27 10:05:12 spamstopper postfix/smtp[23445]: BFD6C167E9: 
to=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, relay=63.144.217.11[63.144.217.11], delay=1, 
status=sent (250 Message queued)

20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38AF0086) [63.144.217.11] connect 
63.144.217.68 port 51576
20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38AF0086) [63.144.217.68] EHLO 
spamstopper.neotechus.com
20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38AF0086) [63.144.217.68] MAIL 
FROM:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38AF0086) [63.144.217.68] RCPT 
TO:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38AF0086) [63.144.217.68] ERR 
mail.neosmart.com invalid user <[EMAIL PROTECTED]   100500
20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38B00086) [63.144.217.11] connect 
63.144.217.68 port 51577
20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38B00086) [63.144.217.68] EHLO 
spamstopper.neotechus.com
20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38B00086) [63.144.217.68] MAIL FROM:<>
20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38B00086) [63.144.217.68] RCPT 
TO:<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
20030227 100511 127.0.0.1       SMTPD (38B00086) [63.144.217.68] 
D:\IMail\spool\D247f38b000869751.SMD 2623
20030227 100512 127.0.0.1       SMTP (8604) processing 
D:\IMail\spool\Q247f38b000869751.SMD
20030227 100512 127.0.0.1       SMTP (8604) ldeliver mail.neotechus.com 
jaxn-main (1)  2623
20030227 100512 127.0.0.1       SMTP (8604) finished 
D:\IMail\spool\Q247f38b000869751.SMD status=1


Changing the directive in iMail to allow NULL senders seems
to have fixed this problem. I don't see that as a solution,
because I don't want to accept mail from NULL senders. Could
someone please help me figure out why postfix doesn't give a
valid mail from? When I look at the actual bounce message I
get back from iMail, it looks like there is a valid email
address in the mail from field. I've come to the conclusion
that iMail must append this. The mail from in the header shows
[EMAIL PROTECTED] but the logs show
that there is nothing in the mail from field.


Any ideas?

Thanks,
Jackson




  At 04:48 PM 2/26/2003 -0600, Len Conrad wrote:


> >mailer-daemon:  postmaster
> >postmaster:     root
> ># Person who should get root's mail
> >#root:           someuser
>
>no, MTAs bounce to the envelope sender and the above aliases have nothing
>to with envelope sender
>
>alias table is used for resolving [EMAIL PROTECTED]  (aka localhost)
>
>the bounces go to [EMAIL PROTECTED]



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