Hi,

At times, my sendmail servers produce the following errors:

Aug  4 23:45:14 mailserver sendmail[30701]: o74DYEfr030701: SYSERR(root): 
collect: I/O error on connection from mail.somedomain.com, 
from=<[email protected]>

I've read up on this error extensively and based on what various people say, 
it's network related as discussed here:

http://www.experts-exchange.com/OS/Unix/Q_24484577.html

(The expert comment right at the bottom of the page). 

I just need to verify a bit discussed in the link above, specifically this bit 
here:

* A firewall/router which is blocking ICMP packets which are used to tell a 
remote host that it's hit a smaller MTU and will need to send smaller packets.  
("Fragmentation Required but DF bit set")

I'm using shorewall 4.0.10. In my shorewall rules, I have this set:

AllowICMPs/ACCEPT       net             $FW
AllowICMPs/ACCEPT       net             loc

All my mail servers exist in the "loc" zone.

The AllowICMPs macro contains:

# cat macro.AllowICMPs
#
# Shorewall version 4 - AllowICMPs Macro
#
# /usr/share/shorewall/macro.AllowICMPs
#
#       This macro ACCEPTs needed ICMP types
#
###############################################################################
#ACTION SOURCE  DEST    PROTO   DEST    SOURCE  RATE    USER/
#                               PORT(S) PORT(S) LIMIT   GROUP
ACCEPT  -       -       icmp    fragmentation-needed
ACCEPT  -       -       icmp    time-exceeded
#LAST LINE -- ADD YOUR ENTRIES BEFORE THIS ONE -- DO NOT REMOVE

So is this enough to guarantee that the MTU discovery process that is meant to 
take place between source (them) and destination (me) is actually working?

This sendmail SYSERR is annoying as it will show up for a week (from one 
particular source where no mail will ever come from them - while most other 
sources remain fine) and then go away for months while it works fine, then come 
back for no apparent reason from the same sending source for another few days 
or a week, then go away again.

Thanks.

Michael.



      

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This SF.net email is sponsored by 

Make an app they can't live without
Enter the BlackBerry Developer Challenge
http://p.sf.net/sfu/RIM-dev2dev 
_______________________________________________
Shorewall-users mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/shorewall-users

Reply via email to