Mail problems

Problem: Some iNEWS users cannot receive emails with the iNEWS internal mail system.

Components and Reasons: The iNews mails are processed from the Linux Sendmail server on one of the iNEWS machines. The iNEWS mailserver resource specifies which machine (A or B) is responsible for this task. Run

INEWS-A# list c mail
DEV   DEVICE_TYPE    COMPUTER  NOTIFY  OPTIONS  DEVNAME
S111  mailserver     A         111

to get the information.

The Sendmail program of course needs the users to know. iNEWS users are not Linux users on the server machines. To workaround this problem in the file /site/.mail/aliases is a list of all iNEWS users which can be taken then by the Sendmail program.

This aliases file is the almost reason for iNEWS mail problems. It is created and updated automatically during each groupchecker run.

But the groupchecker process runs not necessarily on the same machine as the mailserver. Therefore during an update the mail aliases file is automatically transfered to the other iNEWS server. This is done via rpc.

Finally the information about new mails is sent to the users iNEWS client session (in case she is logged in…) If a local firewall blocks those incoming packets on the client machine the user'll not get informed.

Solutions:

• If you suspect mail problems, it's the default first step to run a groupcheck. To do this simply change a story inside the system.groups queue or run it manually in the console with grpcheck system.groups
• Check there is no write group on system.mail and the queues below.
• Check the mailbox on system.mail.out. It MUST be the mailbox of the mailserver (111 in the example above)
• If users get mails but no notifications check the firewall settings between the iNEWS servers and clients.
• If the aliases files are different on both of the iNEWS servers even after a groupchecker run, check the rtools setting on both machines and for both users so and root.
  As a result rcp should work for both users so and root on both machines.
  • Both server names inews-a and inews-b (or the respective names on your system) have to be placed in following files on both machines:

    /etc/hosts
    /etc/hosts.equiv
    /etc/hosts.allow
    /home/so/.rhosts
    /root/.rhosts

  • The words rsh, rexec, rlogin must be included in /etc/securetty also on both iNEWS machines.

Andreas Hartmann, 25.08.2008 12:42: