Why mail fails...

This document describes reasons why mail doesn't get delivered on the Internet.

During the outbreak of the Code Red (version 1 and 2) I kept track of the hosts which tried to infect me. I thought I did people a favour by telling them about their infected machines, but often I couldn't get in contact with them because of wrong mail-configurations.

To find out who to contact, I did the following:

• For host like host.domain.TLD...
  • ...spam abuse@domain.TLD, hostmaster@domain.TLD, postmaster@domain.TLD and webmaster@domain.TLD anyway. Yes, only postmaster@domain.TLD has to exist according to the RFCs, but the other ones often exist. I needed to contact *anybody* there...
  • ...dig for the SOA record and take the name there:
    domain.TLD. 2h38m4s IN SOA host.domain.TLD. a-name.domain.TLD (
  • ...went into the whois database and hoped it would give me some information.
• For hosts like <ipaddress>...
  • ...dig for the SOA record of <ipaddress>.in-addr.arpa and take the name from there.
  • ... went into the arin whois database and hoped it would give me some information.

At the end there is an overview on which tools used.

Of the more than 250 unique mails I send regarding this worm, I only got one reply back from somebody who said he would have a look at it... It's a scary low result.

User unknowns

DNS zone data

A SOA dig for uos.ac.kr gave me:

uos.ac.kr. 2h29m47s IN SOA  uoscc.uos.ac.kr. uoscc.uos.ac.kr.

And mailing to uoscc@uos.ac.kr gave me:

<uoscc@uos.ac.kr>: host uos.ac.kr[203.249.96.5] said: 550 5.1.1
    <uoscc@uos.ac.kr>... User unknown

What is wrong here: the contact-name for this zone does not exist.
How to solve: make all the contact-names in your DNS zones valid.

Whois data

whois for netvigator.com gave me:

   Domain Name: NETVIGATOR.COM

   Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
      Chu, Carlson  (CC18729)  carlson.chu@CWHKT.COM
      Cable & Wireless HKT IMS

And mailing to carlson.chu@CWHKT.COM gave me:

carlson.chu@CWHKT.COM on Thu, 9 Aug 2001 06:26:28 +0800
    The recipient name is not recognized
        The MTS-ID of the original message is:
c=hk;a=cwmail;p=cw;l=HKGMSX130108082226QM29HQ97
    MSEXCH:IMS:HKT:HK02:HKGMSX13 0 (000C05A6) Unknown Recipient

What is wrong here: the administrative and technical contact for this domainname does not exist. Too bad the billing contact did exist, otherwise this problem would have solved itself after a year.
How to solve: make all the contact-email addresses in the whois-database valid.

Expanding aliases

I just spammed webmaster@shinbiro.com and got:

Reporting-MTA: dns; mail5.shinbiro.com
Received-From-MTA: DNS; topaz.mdcc.cx
Arrival-Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 07:17:12 +0900 (KST)

Final-Recipient: RFC822; <webmaster@shinbiro.com>
Action: expanded (to multi-recipient alias)
Status: 2.0.0
Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 07:17:25 +0900 (KST)

Final-Recipient: RFC822; <webmaster@shinbiro.com>
X-Actual-Recipient: RFC822; dreamnara@netgo.com
Action: failed
Status: 5.1.1
Remote-MTA: DNS; mail.9netave.com
Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 553 <dreamnara@netgo.com>... no such user
Last-Attempt-Date: Thu, 9 Aug 2001 07:17:25 +0900 (KST)

What is wrong here: although the email address webmaster@shinbiro.com does exist and has one or more mailboxes it forwards to, there is one mailbox which isn't valid anymore.
How to solve: check all the aliases in your alias-file for validity.

Mailer problems

Just full

postmaster@giga.net.tw
The intended recipient's mailbox is full.

mail.local: mailbox for user 'clixadmin' is full
554 ... Service unavailable

What is wrong here: The mailboxes of these users are full, they're probably even never read.
How to solve: make aliases from these users to real address.

Procmail

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
procmail: Quota exceeded while writing "/var/spool/mail/admcc"
550 admcc... Can't create output: Error 0

What is wrong here: The diskspace allocated for this user is full. He probably never reads his email anyway.
How to solve: See previous section.

Incorrectly configured mailers - 1

The SOA record for this domain tells me to contact root@ns.sysads.com:

sysads.com.             22h9m26s IN SOA  ns.sysads.com. root.ns.sysads.com. (

When mailing root, I get:

   ----- Transcript of session follows -----
553 5.3.5 ns.sysads.com. config error: mail loops back to me (MX problem?)
554 5.3.5 ... Local configuration error

ns.sysads.com doesn't have an MX record, just a A record:

ns.sysads.com.          1d49m14s IN A   203.167.0.17

Looking at the SMTP session:

[~] edwin@k7>telnet ns.sysads.com smtp
Trying 203.167.0.17...
Connected to ns.sysads.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 localhost.localdomain ESMTP Sendmail 8.10.2/8.10.2; Thu, 9 Aug 2001 08:03:22 +0800

localhost.localdomain... Says enough...

What is wrong here: The mailer on ns.sysads.com isn't configured correctly. It should accept mail for ns.sysads.com.
How to solve: Configure the mailer to accept mail for all its hostnames. Or create an MX record for all your hosts and make sure the MX host accepts mail for these hosts. Or change the contact-name in the DNS zone data.

Incorrectly configured mailers - 2

The MX record for paichai.ac.kr points to mail.paichai.ac.kr:

paichai.ac.kr.          1d21h29m44s IN MX  0 mail.paichai.ac.kr.

But when talking to the mailer itself it says:

rcpt to: abuse@paichai.ac.kr
553 sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts (#5.7.1)

What is wrong here: The MX host for this domain isn't configured to accept mail for this domain.
How to solve: Change the configuration of the host to accept mail for that domain.

Incorrectly configured mailers - 3

abuse@ift.ing.unict.it got forwarded to root@pop.cdc.unict.it, but then:

<root@pop.cdc.unict.it>:
Sorry. Although I'm listed as a best-preference MX or A for that host,
it isn't in my control/locals file, so I don't treat it as local. (#5.4.6)

This is the same kind of message as above, but with a different output.

Incorrectly configured mailers - 4

The MX record for ssu.ac.kr points to:

ssu.ac.kr.              1D IN MX        20 computing.ssu.ac.kr.
ssu.ac.kr.              1D IN MX        30 webmail.ssu.ac.kr.
ssu.ac.kr.              1D IN MX        1 saint.ssu.ac.kr.
ssu.ac.kr.              1D IN MX        10 baekma.ssu.ac.kr.

webmail.ssu.ac.kr doesn't exist. computing.ssu.ac.kr, the next one, tells me:

550 postmaster@ssu.ac.kr... Relaying denied

What is wrong here: The prefered MX record doesn't exist, the secondary MX record doesn't know it should receive mail for that domain.
How to solve: Fix your DNS data. Remove all old and obsolete hosts. Furthermore make sure all hosts which are MX host for a domain accept mail for that domain.

Error messages Eric P. Allman never expected to see

<hostmaster@eastern-tele.com>: host mail.eastern-tele.com[203.167.127.19] said:
    554 5.0.0 rewrite: excessive recursion (max 50), ruleset canonify

Bogus DNS data

No reverse lookups

The ipaddress is in use, but there is no reverse data for it.

What is wrong here: In theory, nothing. For real: it will be hard to track where this user is coming from, who to contact in case of problems, mail-relays might refuse him access because there is no reverse lookup.
How to solve: Add a PTR record for this host in the reverse DNS zone.

Invalid reverse lookups

Typical case of a forgotten . at the end:

kaset.chandra.ac.th.          23h58m7s IN A    203.154.220.79
79.220.154.203.in-addr.arpa.  8h29m7s  IN PTR  kaset.chandra.ac.th.220.154.203.in-addr.arpa.

What is wrong here: The reverse data for this host is incorrect. It's a small configuration error and people will be able to overcome this. But programs aren't that smart.
How to solve: Make sure your DNS data is correct. Have a . behind every record.

No MX records

Mail to something@intercom.com.tw gave me:

<abuse@intercom.com.tw>: Name service error for domain intercom.com.tw: Host found but no data record of requested type

What is wrong here: There are no MX nor A records for intercom.com.tw!
How to solve: add an MX record for your domain.

Whois problems

Unreachable whois-servers

Trying to find out about this at whois.krnic.net, I either got a connection refused, a timed-out connection or no data at all.

Distribution reponsibilities

Normally I would look this up at whois.aunic.net.

[~] edwin@k7>whois -h whois.aunic.net iprimus.net.au

% Copyright 2001 auDA, see http://www.aunic.net/copyright.html

% No entries found for the selected source(s).

Australia has a distributed resposibility regarding the whois-database, net.au should be looked up at whois.connect.com.au.

What is wrong here: There should be one point of contact for each TLD and ccTLD.
How to solve: Let whois.<ccTLD>nic.net give references to the whois-server which is responsible for this domain if it isn't itself.

whois.<insert strange name here>.ccTLD

Not everybody ccTLD has an intuitive name for its whois-server, for example whois.dns.be (for Belgium) or whois.domain-registry.nl (for the Netherlands)

How to solve: make a whois.<ccTLD>nic.net for every ccTLD.

Tools used

There are no special tools used, everything is available on a modern unix system.

Dig

Dig is a tool to query DNS servers. The syntax is

dig [@server] <name> [type]

For example to query a SOA record:

[~] edwin@k7>dig mavetju.org. soa
; <<>> DiG 8.3 <<>> mavetju.org. soa 
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 2
;; QUERY SECTION:
;;      mavetju.org, type = SOA, class = IN

;; ANSWER SECTION:
mavetju.org.            1D IN SOA       ns2.mavetju.org. edwin.mavetju.org. (
                                        2001030006      ; serial
                                        12H             ; refresh
                                        15M             ; retry
                                        1W              ; expiry
                                        1H )            ; minimum


;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
mavetju.org.            1D IN NS        ns2.mavetju.org.
mavetju.org.            1D IN NS        ns3.mavetju.org.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
ns2.mavetju.org.        1D IN A         198.133.199.3
ns3.mavetju.org.        1D IN A         198.133.199.4

;; Total query time: 1 msec
;; FROM: k7.mavetju.org to SERVER: default -- 127.0.0.1
;; WHEN: Thu Aug  9 11:47:07 2001
;; MSG SIZE  sent: 29  rcvd: 139

The important data in the SOA field is:

• domain mavetju.org
• contact-name edwin.mavetju.org (the first . should be translated into a @ by yourself)

For example to query a MX record:

[~] edwin@k7>dig mavetju.org. mx
; <<>> DiG 8.3 <<>> mavetju.org. mx 
;; res options: init recurs defnam dnsrch
;; got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 4
;; flags: qr aa rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 2, ADDITIONAL: 3
;; QUERY SECTION:
;;      mavetju.org, type = MX, class = IN

;; ANSWER SECTION:
mavetju.org.            1D IN MX        10 mail.mavetju.org.

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
mavetju.org.            1D IN NS        ns2.mavetju.org.
mavetju.org.            1D IN NS        ns3.mavetju.org.

;; ADDITIONAL SECTION:
mail.mavetju.org.       1D IN A         213.46.9.168
ns2.mavetju.org.        1D IN A         198.133.199.3
ns3.mavetju.org.        1D IN A         198.133.199.4

;; Total query time: 5 msec
;; FROM: k7.mavetju.org to SERVER: default -- 127.0.0.1
;; WHEN: Thu Aug  9 11:50:02 2001
;; MSG SIZE  sent: 29  rcvd: 134

The important data in the MX field is:

• domain mavetju.org
• MX host and preferences mail.mavetju.org and 10

whois

Whois is a tool to query a whois-database. The syntax is

whois [-h <whois-server>] <object>

Without a given whois-server it will take whois.internic.net.
For example to query host in the .com, .edu, .org and .net TLDs:

[~] edwin@k7>whois mavetju.org
Whois Server Version 1.3

Domain names in the .com, .net, and .org domains can now be registered
with many different competing registrars. Go to http://www.internic.net
for detailed information.

   Domain Name: MAVETJU.ORG
   Registrar: GANDI
   Whois Server: whois.gandi.net
   Referral URL: http://www.gandi.net
   Name Server: NS1.SECONDARY.COM
   Name Server: NS2.SECONDARY.COM
   Updated Date: 20-feb-2001

Maybe the whois-client will go further to whois.gandi.net now, maybe it stops and you have to do the query again at whois.gandi.net.

Whois-servers for ccTLDs are often known as whois.<ccTLD>nic.net, but there are exceptions to that rule: For Belgium go to whois.dns.be, for the Netherlands go to whois.domain-registry.nl, for Australia it is partly known in whois.aunic.net, partly somewhere else.