421 Unexpected failure - Email wont send & receive - fresh cutombuild install

Hello,
I did a fresh install of Custom Build based on a CentOS Linux 5.2 Operating system. I have NO problem creating email accounts through direct admin but cannot send or receive email either using webmail or an email client.

When I try to send via SquirrelMaill I get the following message

Message not sent. Server replied:

Service not available, closing channel
421 Unexpected failure, please try later

There are no entries showing the test emails in a reject log.

If I send using Outlook email client I get the following delivery failure bounceback message through my ISP

----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to 34e56mail.fubarbox.net.:
>>> DATA
<<< 421 Unexpected failure, please try later <[email protected]>... Deferred: 421 Unexpected failure, please try later
Warning: message still undelivered after 4 hours Will keep trying until message is 5 days old

I have read and attempted suggestions from threads with users on this form having similar problems without any change. I have executed the permissions script with no change. In advance I welcome and thank you for any suggestions and insight/direction given.

Basssolo4u -
============================

I did a reboot and when I look at the mainlog in exim i saw

2009-02-13 13:08:41 1LUU4Y-0001VC-3p User 0 set for local_delivery transport is on the never_users list
2009-02-13 13:08:41 1LUU4Y-0001VC-3p == [email protected] R=localuser T=local_delivery defer (-29): User 0 set for local_delivery transport is on the never_users list
2009-02-13 13:08:41 1LUU4Y-0001VC-3p failed to open database lock file /var/spool/exim/db/retry.lockfile: Permission denied (euid=8 egid=12)
2009-02-13 13:08:41 1LY5H7-0000sy-9L Failed to create spool file /var/spool/exim/input//1LY5H7-0000sy-9L-D: Permission denied
2009-02-13 13:08:41 1LUU4Y-0001VC-3p failed to unlink /var/spool/exim/input//1LUU4Y-0001VC-3p-J: Permission denied
2009-02-13 13:09:17 1LY5Hh-0000tF-9Y Failed to create spool file /var/spool/exim/input//1LY5Hh-0000tF-9Y-D: Permission denied
2009-02-13 13:10:20 1LY5Ii-0000tO-7L Failed to create spool file /var/spool/exim/input//1LY5Ii-0000tO-7L-D: Permission denied

(Note to others; basssolo4u has sent me his password information privately and has retained me to work on his server; I'm replying here so as to help others who may have the same problem.)

I found a discrepancy in the ownership of /var/spool/exim/input file and in some of the email files in the spool:
and some of the filenames have this ownership:
On at least one of my servers the owner/group for this directory and these files is mail:mail.

I have no idea if there is a "correct" or why this might have happened. Running the set_permissions.sh script leaves it alone so I corrected it manually:
That resolved the Failed to create spool file error and other errors conditional on the ownership of the files and directories in /var/spool/exim.
The User 0 set for local_delivery transport is on the never_users list is normal; for security reasons our exim configuration doesn't send email to root. To resolve the problem I created a forwarder in the /root directory:
the contents of the file is the email address I want root mail to be forwarded to; I used admin at the hostname of the server.

No more errors in the log.

I logged into an email account set up for me on the server and tried sending me an email.

I got it! And the log entries for it look good.

I don't know what happened to the ownership. I hope that basssolo4u will respond with an answer as to whether he played with anything in terms of ownership, before I ask John if he can figure out what might have caused the incorrect ownership.

Jeff

Hello,
I did not manually alter any settings for ownership or chmod on anything. This was a fresh install.
B -

Hello,

From time to time, we see installs that have a prevoius exim installs before DA gets there. The "exim" user is a dead giveaway of that. Usually those files in questions are chowned to exim:exim. The setup DA requires is mail:mail, as Jeff has set. This is one reason we recommend having a clean install without any other conflicting packages. Usually in this case, the admin's have no idea exim was already there, as the package system might installed it as a requirement for other packages. DA does it's best to remove things that get in the way before installing, but can't predict all scenarios.

Thanks Jeff.

John

jlasman said:

That resolved the Failed to create spool file error and other errors conditional on the ownership of the files and directories in /var/spool/exim.
The User 0 set for local_delivery transport is on the never_users list is normal; for security reasons our exim configuration doesn't send email to root. To resolve the problem I created a forwarder in the /root directory:

Code:

# ls -al .forward
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 28 Feb 13 15:12 .forward
#

the contents of the file is the email address I want root mail to be forwarded to; I used admin at the hostname of the server.

No more errors in the log.

I logged into an email account set up for me on the server and tried sending me an email.

I got it! And the log entries for it look good.

I don't know what happened to the ownership. I hope that basssolo4u will respond with an answer as to whether he played with anything in terms of ownership, before I ask John if he can figure out what might have caused the incorrect ownership.

Jeff

Click to expand...

Hey Jeff,
Thanks for your help on this prior incident. Had to rebuild a machine and ran into the same problem. Followed your command line entries and that corrected the problem. I didn't understand all of what you had gone about doing in this last section so I had not yet implemented this section of your fix. Please elaborate on what this last part does and how to go about doing it.
Best Regards,
Basssolo4u -

I'm not sure what you mean by last part; it's only been six months .

Do you mean creating the forwarder? I set a forwarder so that root mail gets forwarded to something you really read.

Jeff

Could you list the contents of the .forward file

I've found some sample .forward files on exim's web site:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/local/sys/mail.old/filter.exmp.html

But I can't see anything that describes doing what you have just done - could you please post the contents of the .forward file - or simply one entry that forwards anything sent to user 'root' to the user 'admin'

Many thanks

Doing what who has done? You've managed to confuse me.

Forget all those complex forward file examples.

Create the .forward file:
Then edit it and simply put in the email address to which you want root email forwarded. For example, if you want root email forwarded to [email protected] then the entire contents of the .forward file should simply be [email protected].

Jeff

Sorry to confuse you - I'm ill and tired and clumsy - happily you managed to give the reply to the question I was meaning to ask! Thanks