Php – Where do bounced messages from sendmail end up

PHPsendmail

I have a public intranet (called internet) that is password protected that used by our employees. We have a feature where one can send an article to a customer for example. That being said, the marketing department, if they wish other employees to be made aware of it, they send an email to a group, such as sales-international@company.tld for example, and some people have mentioned they don't receive it.

If this is the case, how do I see the log file when a message gets bounced?

I can obviously use sendmail from a root shell and it immediately bounces back from mailer-daemon but how can I do such activities if apache is sending the message, not root?

I should mention the send message is from within the webpage itself, not using his email client.

Best Answer

Look in the configuration file for syslog on the system hosting the apache instance, it should be /etc/syslog.conf if you have a standard installation. Look where the mail stuff is logged.

If you have root access, you can change the mail log specification to mail.debug, which will give you a ton of information on sendmail's behavior. Make sure you understand the syslog.conf format before making changes to it.

Related Solutions

Sendmail – IP may be forged

What OS is this? I've had issues on Debian/Ubuntu in the past where the kernel tries to be clever - if you connect to the external IP address on the same server that IP is assigned to, it actually routes it through the localhost adapter.

This issue had me stumped for ages when I was setting up a firewall - I was only allowing traffic in on the external adapter, but the firewall was blocking any requests made from that machine - turns out it was routing it through localhost which the firewall had been told to block.

In your case what you end up with is sendmail receiving the connection on localhost (127.0.0.1) but the EHLO stating the external ip.ad.dr.es - hence thinking its forged.

Just a shot in the dark, may not apply to your case. If you've got another server with sendmail available, try getting that one to connect to the external IP address on this sendmail server.

Ubuntu – Prevent mail server (sendmail) used to backscatter

Sounds like backscatter and if I'm understanding you, your understanding is correct but you're missing the right experiment:

sendmail non-existing-user@mydomain.com
FROM: me@mydomain.com
SUBJECT: hey
hi there
.

(I changed the message a bit to make the bounce easier to spot.)

Better, try sending the same message from outside your server.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Sendmail – IP may be forged

Ubuntu – Prevent mail server (sendmail) used to backscatter

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