Re: MAJORDOMO ABORT (mj_majordomo)

"Sharma, Vikas" <[email protected]> Tue, 4 Aug 2009 11:33:09 -0400
Newsgroups gmane.mail.majordomo.general
Message-ID <AE55119BF3F6A64283D2E238629870A804611587@susday7659.TD.teradata.com>
Your assumption is correct ;) I'm new to these technology.

Thanks for your brief process. I'll follow and let you confirm. 


>Vikas 

-----Original Message-----
From: Daniel Liston [mailto:[email protected]] 
Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 11:25 AM
To: Sharma, Vikas
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: Re: MAJORDOMO ABORT (mj_majordomo)

I will assume based on your reply that you are new to
unix/sendmail/majordomo, and you don't know how to google.  Did you
mention this is happening on just one, or all of your lists?  Narrowing
the problem down makes it easier to solve.


If you log on to your majordomo server, and run "uname -a" what is
output?
Assuming the GNU version of "grep" is available on your OS, this script
should help.  If your lists are not in /var/lib/majordomo/lists, change
to match your environment.

------------------------>%cut 
------------------------>here%<-----------------------------------------
------------------------>--
#!/bin/sh

listdir=/var/lib/majordomo/lists

/bin/grep -i "mailer-daemon" $listdir/*
/bin/grep -i "postmaster" $listdir/*
/bin/grep -i "root" $listdir/* | grep -v config
------------------------>%cut 
------------------------>here%<-----------------------------------------
------------------------>--

If you get any output from the above script, you have a problem.

Another place to look is your /etc/aliases file.

/bin/grep -i postmaster /etc/aliases

You should see something like:

mailer-daemon:  postmaster
postmaster:     root
info:           postmaster
marketing:      postmaster
sales:          postmaster
support:        postmaster

To top this off, you should have a "root" alias here that points to a
real address, like;

root: [email protected]

As mentioned previously, the most likely answer is that a spammer forged
your majordomo address in the from header of their junk mail.  Some of
the emails they sent are undeliverable/bouncing to the return address of
your majordomo.  These bounces are "from" mailer-daemon or postmaster,
and the default majordomo configuration refuses to reply, which is a
good thing.
If majordomo did respond, you would end up in two robots auto-responding
to each other for infinity.

Be glad majordomo aborted, but check your /var/lib/majordomo/Log file
and maybe /var/log/maillog to see what else is reported.  Maybe you can
block the "blowback" spam, and make certain that your server is not the
cause of the problem.

Dan Liston

Sharma, Vikas wrote:
> Daniel,
> 
> I have not changed anything in majordomo.
> I'm using sendmail with majordomo. I have several lists in majordomo 
> for many users.
> But I started getting these messages just now. I'm not sure if my list

> have a subscriber named root@ or postmaster@ address. Can I check it 
> by some script?
> 
> 
>> Vikas
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Daniel Liston [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 10:20 AM
> To: Sharma, Vikas
> Cc: [email protected]
> Subject: Re: MAJORDOMO ABORT (mj_majordomo)
> 
> Sharma, Vikas wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have started getting the below error:
>>
>> -------------------------------------------------------
>> MAJORDOMO ABORT (mj_majordomo)!!
>>
>> [email protected]_
<mailto:[email protected]>:
>> not replying to MAILER-DAEMON to avoid mail loop.
>> ---------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Can someone please help me what is the problem?
>>
>>
> 
> There are possibilities of one or more of several problems.  Have you 
> changed anything recently?  What mailer (MTA) do you have majordomo 
> configured with?
> 
> If you google on "MAJORDOMO ABORT" or MAILER-DAEMON and "mail loop"...
> 
> Do you have more than one list?  Does this happen on just one of them?
> Does your list have a subscriber named root@ or postmaster@ address?
> 
> These days, with 90-95% of all email on the internet being spam, you 
> probably received a bounce message to your majordomo address. Check 
> your sendmail logs and your majordomo/Log for entries with the same or

> near the same time stamp as your abort message to confirm.
> 
> Dan Liston
>