Knowledgebase

If you get a 550 error as a reply when you email a user with directadmin, saying Remote host said: 550 “Unknown User” or The error that the other server returned was: 550 550 “Unknown User” (state 13). or something equivalent, then the problem might be your virtual domainowner settings.

This happens with exim especially when moving from one server to another via Directadmin.

To verify this solution, first check your paniclog:

tail /var/log/exim/paniclog

If you get something like this:

   

 2012-06-08 18:53:01 1SczTF-0002Cj-B8 Failed to find user “” from expanded string “${lookup{$domain}lsearch{/etc/virtual/domainowners}{$value}}” for the domain_filter router

then you probably have an issue with your domainowners file. as you can see, the perl script can’t parse the username, hence the error “unknown user” when receiving email.

The solution is to rebuild the /etc/virtual directory

Get a backup

cd /etc
cp -Rp virtual virtual.backup

Verify its existance

mkdir -p /etc/virtual
chmod 755 /etc/virtual
chown mail:mail /etc/virtual

Create this script and save it somewhere, let’s say /root/fix_virtual.sh 

#!/bin/sh
     
echo -n '' > /etc/virtual/domains
echo -n '' > /etc/virtual/domainowners
    
mkdir -p /etc/virtual/`hostname`
chown mail:mail /etc/virtual/`hostname`
chmod 711 /etc/virtual/`hostname`
echo `hostname` >> /etc/virtual/domains
    
for u in `ls /usr/local/directadmin/data/users`; do
{
for d in `cat /usr/local/directadmin/data/users/$u/domains.list`; do
{
echo "$d: $u" >> /etc/virtual/domainowners
echo "$d" >> /etc/virtual/domains
     
DMN=/etc/virtual/$d
    
mkdir -p $DMN
chmod 711 $DMN
chown mail:mail $DMN
   
touch $DMN/aliases
if [ ! -s $DMN/aliases ]; then
           echo "$u: $u" > $DMN/aliases
fi
touch $DMN/autoresponder.conf
touch $DMN/filter
touch $DMN/filter.conf
touch $DMN/passwd
touch $DMN/quota
touch $DMN/vacation.conf
chown mail:mail $DMN/*

mkdir -p $DMN/majordomo
chmod 751 $DMN/majordomo
chown majordomo:daemon $DMN/majordomo

mkdir -p $DMN/reply
chmod 700 $DMN/reply
       chown mail:mail $DMN/reply

for p in `cat /usr/local/directadmin/data/users/$u/domains/$d.pointers 2>/dev/null`; do
{
       echo "$p: $u"  >> /etc/virtual/domainowners
       echo "$p" >> /etc/virtual/domains
       ln -s $d /etc/virtual/$p
 };
done;
}
done;
}
done;
    
chown mail:mail /etc/virtual/domains
chown mail:mail /etc/virtual/domainowners
chmod 644 /etc/virtual/domainowners
chmod 644 /etc/virtual/domains

Make it exacutable and run.
   

chmod 755 /root/fix_virtual.sh

/root/fix_virtual.sh

Restart exim services
   

service exim restart

Your problem should be fixed.