From: Charles Gregory on
On Tue, 4 May 2010, Nataraj wrote:
> Enclosed is a tcpdump of a telnet connection where nothing was typed, i.e. I
> telnetted to the smtp server and 5 seconds later the server closed the
> connection.

THIS IS NORMAL. As I said previously, type the MAIL FROM, RCPT TO, and
DATA commands, send a couple of ilnes, THEN wait and time the timeout.

How about those logs showing a complete mail 'life cycle'?

- C

From: Noel Jones on
On 5/4/2010 2:16 PM, Charles Gregory wrote:
> On Tue, 4 May 2010, Nataraj wrote:
>> Enclosed is a tcpdump of a telnet connection where nothing was typed,
>> i.e. I telnetted to the smtp server and 5 seconds later the server
>> closed the connection.
>
> THIS IS NORMAL. As I said previously, type the MAIL FROM, RCPT TO, and
> DATA commands, send a couple of ilnes, THEN wait and time the timeout.
>
> How about those logs showing a complete mail 'life cycle'?
>
> - C

No, it's not normal. When you telnet to a postfix smtpd,
postfix will sit there patiently for $smtpd_timeout before it
disconnects if you don't type anything.

The described behavior suggests smtpd_timeout is set for 4s,
but that parameter isn't in the postconf or master.cf shown to
the list.

I don't think there's anything else we can do for the OP.

-- Noel Jones

From: Charles Gregory on
On Tue, 4 May 2010, Noel Jones wrote:
> The described behavior suggests smtpd_timeout is set for 4s, but that
> parameter isn't in the postconf or master.cf shown to the list.

Or the poster has a front-end on his mail server, and that is why I asked
for a complete log of the 'lifecycle' of the mail, so we can spot if he is
getting the timeout from some other piece of software.

- C

From: "N. Yaakov Ziskind" on
Noel Jones wrote (on Tue, May 04, 2010 at 02:33:48PM -0500):
> On 5/4/2010 2:16 PM, Charles Gregory wrote:
> >On Tue, 4 May 2010, Nataraj wrote:
> >>Enclosed is a tcpdump of a telnet connection where nothing was typed,
> >>i.e. I telnetted to the smtp server and 5 seconds later the server
> >>closed the connection.
> >
> >THIS IS NORMAL. As I said previously, type the MAIL FROM, RCPT TO, and
> >DATA commands, send a couple of ilnes, THEN wait and time the timeout.
> >
> >How about those logs showing a complete mail 'life cycle'?
> >
> >- C
>
> No, it's not normal. When you telnet to a postfix smtpd,
> postfix will sit there patiently for $smtpd_timeout before it
> disconnects if you don't type anything.
>
> The described behavior suggests smtpd_timeout is set for 4s,
> but that parameter isn't in the postconf or master.cf shown to
> the list.
>
> I don't think there's anything else we can do for the OP.
>
> -- Noel Jones

If the timeout is really set to 4s, can it be overriden in master.cf?
Wouldn't that be a useful workaround, or at least a diagnostic?

Thanks.

From: Nataraj on
Charles Gregory wrote:
> On Tue, 4 May 2010, Nataraj wrote:
>> Enclosed is a tcpdump of a telnet connection where nothing was typed,
>> i.e. I telnetted to the smtp server and 5 seconds later the server
>> closed the connection.
>
> THIS IS NORMAL. As I said previously, type the MAIL FROM, RCPT TO, and
> DATA commands, send a couple of ilnes, THEN wait and time the timeout.
>
> How about those logs showing a complete mail 'life cycle'?
>
> - C
I have attached tcpdump-with-commands.txt where I pasted with the mouse
helo mymail.com
mail from:<me(a)mymail.com>

I then waited and it still timed out in 5 seconds.

I think the timeout should be whatever the smtpd_timout parameter is set
to (300s in my case), unless the stress code is enabled and operating,
in which case it should be set to the stress config timeout parameter).
5 seconds is not a normal timeout for my configuration. I am enclosing
a tcpdump of a telnet session to the mail server which serves this
mailing list (I hope it's not considered abusive to use it as a
reference:-)), which times out after 21 seconds (probably because it is
configured that way). 5 seconds is just too short, and it should change
based on my configuration, which it is not doing.

As I've mentioned, I can't type fast enough to my server to prevent
timeouts, but if I reenable pipelining, I can paste smtp commands and
submit messages, only if I paste them all at once (and pipelining is
enabled).

Also, please don't loose sight of the fact that all of my timeouts are
screwed up, i.e. inbound smtp, outbound smtp as well as transport and
policy. Maybe this is not a postfix problem, or postfix is having some
strange interaction with something going on in the OS (or a vmware
clocking problem or something).

Nataraj