Hi,

I've been wracking my brain for the better part of the
day and pouring through the Sendmail 2nd Edition book
and yet I still can't figure this problem out. I do have
Sendmail 3rd Edition but it's at a different office and
at this moment, I don't have access to it. (Furthermore,
what bums me out is that while my home's ISP has
news service, my work's ISP doesn't.)

Four out of thirty workstations (using Mozilla/Seamonkey), when
sending e-mail, stay at the "Connected:" part for the better
part of half a minute before sending anything.

I thought it was a client issue, but after testing out the
client, there seems to be an apparent pause between the
EHLO client command and the server's response.

I'm using Sendmail 8.14.1.

I telnet from one of the 'wacky' workstations:

c:\> telnet mailserver 25

<pause for ten seconds>
220 mailserver ESMTP
EHLO machine1
<pause for twenty seconds or more>
250-mailserver Hello [192.168.8.72], pleased to meet you
250 ENHANCEDSTATUSCODES

<ctrl ]> quit

Now, I've tried (in hindsight, a bad idea):

/usr/sbin/sendmail -bd -q15m -d -v -O LogLevel=14

and when I telnet to the server again, I get a whole bunch
of debug information up til I get the "220 mailserver ESMTP".
When I type EHLO machine1, I get no debug messages.

Aside for upgrading Sendmail to 8.14.1 recently (and
also Spamassassin), I can't think of any reason why
the server would respond so slowly ONLY to those four
particular workstations (so far I only could test
the four).

Any hints/pointers very much appreciated

Edmund

Ed wrote:
> Aside for upgrading Sendmail to 8.14.1 recently (and also
> Spamassassin), I can't think of any reason why the server would
> respond so slowly ONLY to those four particular workstations (so far
> I only could test the four).

Two things immediately come to mind.
1) Ident timeout.
2) Reverse DNS timeout.

I think you are probably running in to both of these. The Ident timeout will be prior to the connection and the reverse DNS timeout will be after the HELO / EHLO command.

Both of these are configurable from the cf / mc file.

You may want to see if there is a different firewall / reverse DNS configuration for these few clients than from the rest of your network.



Grant. . . .

Grant Taylor wrote:
> Ed wrote:
>> Aside for upgrading Sendmail to 8.14.1 recently (and also
>> Spamassassin), I can't think of any reason why the server would
>> respond so slowly ONLY to those four particular workstations (so far
>> I only could test the four).
>
> Two things immediately come to mind.
> 1) Ident timeout.
> 2) Reverse DNS timeout.
>
> I think you are probably running in to both of these. The Ident timeout
> will be prior to the connection and the reverse DNS timeout will be
> after the HELO / EHLO command.
>
> Both of these are configurable from the cf / mc file.

Thanks Grant! Thanks for the very prompt hint. At least now
I know what terms to look up.

> You may want to see if there is a different firewall / reverse DNS
> configuration for these few clients than from the rest of your network.

I understand. And I do believe I think it could be both IDENT
as all those workstations use Windows XP (built in firewall
affecting IDENT?)

Anyway! Very much appreciated!

Edmund