[cobalt-users] RE: Sendmail errors showing up on logs

[chae <chae@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Yah,

For the archives...

Problem was:

Over the last few days I've been noticing the following show up in the 
logs, but it's not every hour so it's not a consistent problem.
The gethostbyaddr(xxx.xxx.79.217) is some of the IP numbers we have on the 
server
The to=xxxxxx@xxxxxx is the email address root sends all server 
messages/logs to

The problem only seems to be with root sending to this email address, then 
the next time it's okay, if I send a standard email through the server to 
the address no problem. I've rebooted to server thinking it might be the 
"Upgrade" memory problem with the RAQ3's but it still happens after the 
reboot. Sometimes it'll only show an error for some of the IP's next time 
it shows for all of them.

Anyone know what's causing this and how to resolve it?

Many thanks in advance

Chae
===================

Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: gethostbyaddr(xxx.xxx.79.217) failed: 2
Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: gethostbyaddr(xxx.xxx.79.218) failed: 2
Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: gethostbyaddr(xxx.xxx.64.123) failed: 2
Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: gethostbyaddr(xxx.xxx.79.186) failed: 2
Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: gethostbyaddr(xxx.xxx.79.188) failed: 2
Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: gethostbyaddr(xxx.xxx.79.189) failed: 2
Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: gethostbyaddr(xxx.xxx.79.187) failed: 2
Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: gethostbyaddr(xxx.xxx.79.199) failed: 2
Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: UAA01629: from=root, size=20217,
class=0, pri=50217, nrcpts=1, msgid=<200206120801.UAA01629@xxxxxxxxx>,
relay=root@localhost
Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: UAA01629: to=xxxxxx@xxxxxx,
delay=00:00:00, mailer=esmtp, stat=queued

...more error message followed on original post

The problem was with my colo center after contacting them and telling them 
to check the reverse DNS for the allocated IP's the mysterious error 
messages suddenly disappeared :). Though there was no explanation or "sorry 
about that" from them. Another part of the problem was the email address 
that the server sent the email messages/logs to had a problem and after 
going through the logs again we noticed...

Jun 12 20:01:03 ns sendmail[1629]: UAA01629: to=xxxxx@xxxxxxxx, 
ctladdr=root (0/0), delay=00:00:00, xdelay=00:00:00, mailer=esmtp, 
relay=xxxxxxxx., stat=Deferred: Name server: xxxxxxxxxxx.: host name lookup 
failure

So contacted the ISP as it always showed up on the following log report 
when the sendmail warning came up, after 3 or 4 emails to them it stopped 
showing the host name lookup failure.

Regards

Chae