[CentOS] sendmail deferred

Fri Jan 13 16:42:01 UTC 2012
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On Fri, Jan 13, 2012 at 8:54 AM, Ismail Ozatay <ismailozatay at gmail.com> wrote:

> I having a problem with my sendmail server running on centos 5.7 x64.
> Sometimes when  we send an email to microsoft exchange servers, sendmail
> says deferred or timeout. I do not know what is happening. Here is some
> details;
>
> [root at avgw ~]# sendmail -v -qRxxx at xxx.gov.qa
>
> Running /var/spool/mqueue/q0B7caw9023076 (sequence 1 of 2)
> <xxx at xxx.gov.qa>... Connecting to smtp.xxx.gov.qa. via esmtp...
> 220 mail.xxx.gov.qa Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service ready at Fri, 13 Jan
> 2012 16:37:28 +0300
>  >>> EHLO avgw.yyy.com
> 250-mail.xxx.gov.qa Hello [95.9.x.x]
> 250-SIZE 10485760
> 250-PIPELINING
> 250-DSN
> 250-ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES
> 250-AUTH
> 250-8BITMIME
> 250-BINARYMIME
> 250 CHUNKING
>  >>> MAIL From:<xxx at yyy.com> SIZE=939155
> 250 2.1.0 Sender OK
>  >>> RCPT To:<xxx at xxx.gov.qa>
>  >>> DATA
> 250 2.1.5 Recipient OK
> 354 Start mail input; end with <CRLF>.<CRLF>
> timeout writing message to smtp2.xxx.gov.qa.: Connection reset by
> smtp2.xxx.gov.qa.
> <xxx at xxx.gov.qa>... Deferred

This looks like a problem on the receiving side.  They are probably
doing virus/spam scanning or something slow. Or they are overloaded or
crashed.   Unless you've changed something, your side should allow an
hour or so for this timeout.

> [root at avgw ~]# telnet smtp2.xxx.gov.qa 25
> Trying 89.211.40.246...
> Connected to smtp2.xxx.gov.qa (89.211.x.x).
> Escape character is '^]'.
> 220 mail.xxx.gov.qa Microsoft ESMTP MAIL Service ready at Fri, 13 Jan
> 2012 17:54:56 +0300
>
> It seems everything is ok but i do not know what is the problem with
> exchange communication. Has anybody experienced this issue?

If it eventually retries and completes there is nothing wrong on your side.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com