Hi,

We are migrating to a new mail server. Both servers are inside a firewall.
During the migration, both servers receive and send mail and the mail
delivery is handled by virtusertable and aliases files.

Problem is, when sending from old server to outside, there is a noticeable
delay, which also shows up in /var/log/syslog and is overe 7 minutes.
Sending from new server is immediate.

Here is our setup

host1.domain.com - old server
host2.domain.com - new server

They both send mail directly through firewall, but only host2 receives the
mail for both.
MX records point to: mail1.domain.com, and mail2.domain.com and firewall
routes smtp traffic to host2.domain.com

The host1 used to be connected to the internet through ISDN modem, but we
changed its gateway tro be the firewall, that's when the delays started.
host1 also runs as an internal DNS server if this is of any relevance.

Any as to why the delay sending from host1 would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Dave

Hello Dave,

In article <cb0f1$4648780f$453dce02$5508@FUSE.NET>,
Dave <withheld@nospam.thanks> wrote:
>Hi,
>
>We are migrating to a new mail server. Both servers are inside a firewall.
>During the migration, both servers receive and send mail and the mail
>delivery is handled by virtusertable and aliases files.
>
>Problem is, when sending from old server to outside, there is a noticeable
>delay, which also shows up in /var/log/syslog and is overe 7 minutes.
>Sending from new server is immediate.
>
>Here is our setup
>
>host1.domain.com - old server
>host2.domain.com - new server
>
>They both send mail directly through firewall, but only host2 receives the
>mail for both.
>MX records point to: mail1.domain.com, and mail2.domain.com and firewall
>routes smtp traffic to host2.domain.com
>
>The host1 used to be connected to the internet through ISDN modem, but we
>changed its gateway tro be the firewall, that's when the delays started.
>host1 also runs as an internal DNS server if this is of any relevance.
>
>Any as to why the delay sending from host1 would be appreciated.

some trivial checks might you to see where the problem is located.

For firewallproblems:
telnet mailserver.to.connect 25

This should show up fast with the greeting-message of the contacted
mailserver (exit with: QUIT)

Checking the dns-server you might try nslookup (or host) with something
like:
nslookup local-ipaddress
nslookup local-hostname
nslookup mailserver.to.connect
nslookup -q=mx mailserver.to.connect

sending a test-mail to a known external mail-address may you too:

/usr/sbin/sendmail -v knwon@external.mail.address < /dev/null

On modern sendmail which delivers to localhost you might use this
command as user root ('man sendmail' explains the options):

/usr/sbin/sendmail -Am knwon@external.mail.address < /dev/null

All this tests will not fix your problem but might to locate
the source of the problem.

regards

winfried

--
Winfried Magerl - Internet Administration
Siemens IT Solutions and Services, 81739 Munich, Germany
Internet-Mail: Winfried.Magerl@siemens.com