Last night I saw an MIMEDefang error in my mail logs that I have never noticed before:
### TRACKING MESSAGE: i1R1dKT7023699 Feb 26 23:02:39 mx sendmail[23699]: i1R1dKT7023699: from=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, size=14033627, class=0, nrcpts=2, msgid=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, proto=ESMTP, daemon=MTA, relay=example.com [x.x.x.x] Feb 26 23:02:39 mx sendmail[23699]: i1R1dKT7023699: Milter (mimedefang): write(L) returned -1, expected 5: Broken pipe Feb 26 23:02:39 mx sendmail[23699]: i1R1dKT7023699: Milter (mimedefang): to error state Feb 26 23:02:39 mx sendmail[23699]: i1R1dKT7023699: Milter: data, reject=451 4.7.1 Please try again later Feb 26 23:02:39 mx sendmail[23699]: i1R1dKT7023699: to=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, delay=03:22:54, pri=14093627, stat=Please try again later Feb 26 23:02:39 mx sendmail[23699]: i1R1dKT7023699: to=<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, delay=03:22:54, pri=14093627, stat=Please try again later After some more research I discovered that the broken pipe errors occur somewhat regularly, and usually correspond with such sendmail errors as "timeout waiting for input from servername during message collect". What made this one stand out is that it caused MD to tempfail the message. (In fact, the only reason I noticed it is that I have a script running that alerts me when my mail exchanger tempfails a message for any reason). Today the relay tried to redeliver the message and the same error occurred. The message is quite large (around 14 MB), but I have successfully received messages that were up to 20000000 bytes in size (my server's limit) without issue. While trying to troubleshoot the problem, I temporarily placed a check for this particular relay in filter_relay() and had MD return accept and no more filtering to sendmail just in case there was a problem with my filter that was causing this broken pipe error. After doing that I noticed the relay once again tried to redeliver, but this time it failed with the "timeout waiting for input from servername during message collect". So apparently there was some network issue between our mail servers that was causing the message to timeout in transit. I had the sender of this huge message send it to a different address of mine to see if there was something in the message itself that was causing a problem. I received it and then did an MTA-level redirect through my MD box and received it without any problem. But I did the redirect from a host that is on the same physical network as my box, so the transfer was very fast (30 seconds versus 2 hours(!) for the original relay in question). Basically I say all this to ask a question. Is it possible that this message is taking so long to transfer that the MD slave is dying before it is fully received, and this is what is causing the broken pipe error? I am using the "-l" option to the multiplexor and it is not logging anything for this message, and there are no log entries to indicate that the slave is hitting is being killed, so I'm at a loss. Normally I would not care about this, if the slave just died and sendmail aborted, but MD is tempfailing because of this error and it appears to the sender that this is a problem with my mail server's filtering instead of a network issue. I'd appreciate any insight that can be offered... ___________________________________________ Michael Sims Project Analyst - Information Technology Crye-Leike Realtors Office: (901)758-5648 Pager: (901)769-3722 ___________________________________________ _______________________________________________ Visit http://www.mimedefang.org and http://www.canit.ca MIMEDefang mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.roaringpenguin.com/mailman/listinfo/mimedefang
