Cannot email external addresses

[knarfling]

I am having difficulty with my Zabbix server will only send emails to internal addresses. ([email protected]) External addresses ([email protected]) always show an error in the Actions tab of:
Error receiving answer on RCPT TO request [Success]

I have tried sending emails from Linux using the mail command, as well as telnetting localhost 25 and issuing the helo, mail from, rcpt to, and data commands directly. Each time, I can manually send the email with no difficulty.

The message itself is confusing. It seems to say that it could not process the to: address, but that it was successful. It is almost like it is timing out.

Is there anything else I can try to help pinpoint this trouble? If I cannot get alerts sent to external addresses, we will have to scrap Zabbix and try a different monitoring system.

Thanx for any help.

[James Wells]

Greetings,

Based on what you describe, there are any number of possible issues. What I would suggest though is to configure the Zabbix Server daemon to use the server's sendmail / postfix / <Your Choice> mail server to send the mail out. This provides a number of advantages overall;

1. Mail Packages Respect MX records. Often times, this is not a big issue, but when you are dealing with external mail sites, it can become a huge issue. For example when someone sends a mail to my personal account, the IP address for my personal network is completely different from the IP address where I recieve mail. This is done through MX records.
2. Mail Packages support store and forward. By default, the Zabbix Server daemon uses fire and forget mail. It will generate the email, and attempt to send it to the destination server. If the server accepts the messages great, if not Zabbix simply logs that the mail was not sent. With a mail package, Zabbix will connect to it, send the message, at which point the mail server will store the message until such time as it is capable of sending it, up to 5 days.
3. Mail packages support external logging. While the Zabbix Server can write to a log file, or Syslog, it generally is not specific enough about when it sends alerts. Using a local mail server though, you can configure it to give more details in Syslog about when it sent it, error messages recieved when it sent it, etc.

Perhaps it is just me showing my age, but I have made it a habit to have a mail package on every system I build out, and to use the local mail package for all outgoing mail. That way, if there are ever any network breaks, server outages, etc, I still get the emails, sometimes late, but I still get them.

[knarfling]

Thanx for the advice. I should have mentioned it more specifically in my earlier post. I do have sendmail installed, and when I telnet to localhost 25, I can send out emails just fine. Since my mail server is on a completely different subnet in a different country, I cannot use it as my mail server.

(I tried that in my debug and I get Relay Access Denied. We are not willing to open it up as a relay, even for a trusted IP.)

I have checked the mail logs, and there is no record of the external emails being sent. It is as if Zabbix sends some commands, does not get the response it wants, and then never sends the emails. I have tried upping the debug level on sendmail, but I don't get anything. And there is no mention at all in the Zabbix server logs.