Bug#1109684: exim4-daemon-heavy: Fails to process email if local_host_whitelist contains a non-hostname

[peterc at mx3.chubb.wattle.id.au]

Package: exim4-daemon-heavy
Version: 4.96-15+deb12u7
Severity: normal

Dear Maintainer,
 There are a few sites that send badly-formatted emails that I want to accept
 (banks that send bad dates in autogenerated email, for example).
 I have these listed in /etc/exim4/local_host_whitelist

 If _any_ host listed in local_host_whitelit cannot be found in DNS, then 
 _all_ email received by the exim4 daemon is 'temporarily rejected'; with 
  no useful log message.

Log messages like:
2025-07-22 00:01:15 H=mxphxpool2076.ebay.com [66.211.185.239] X=TLS1.3:ECDHE_X25519__ECDSA_SECP256R1_SHA256__AES_256_GCM:256 CV=no F=<ebay at ebay.com> temporarily rejected RCPT <person at example.com>



  The only way I've found to debug this is to use exim4 -bh and see what the log messages say.

I suggest adding '+ignore_unknown' in the ACL to fix this.

-e Package-specific info:
Exim version 4.96 #2 built 22-Mar-2025 10:25:14
Copyright (c) University of Cambridge, 1995 - 2018
(c) The Exim Maintainers and contributors in ACKNOWLEDGMENTS file, 2007 - 2022
Berkeley DB: Berkeley DB 5.3.28: (September  9, 2013)
Support for: crypteq iconv() IPv6 PAM Perl Expand_dlfunc GnuTLS TLS_resume move_frozen_messages Content_Scanning DANE DKIM DNSSEC Event I18N OCSP PIPECONNECT PRDR PROXY Queue_Ramp SOCKS SPF SRS TCP_Fast_Open
Lookups (built-in): lsearch wildlsearch nwildlsearch iplsearch cdb dbm dbmjz dbmnz dnsdb dsearch ldap ldapdn ldapm mysql nis nis0 passwd pgsql sqlite
Authenticators: cram_md5 cyrus_sasl dovecot external plaintext spa tls
Routers: accept dnslookup ipliteral iplookup manualroute queryprogram redirect
Transports: appendfile/maildir/mailstore/mbx autoreply lmtp pipe smtp
Malware: f-protd f-prot6d drweb fsecure sophie clamd avast sock cmdline
Fixed never_users: 0
Configure owner: 0:0
Size of off_t: 8
Configuration file search path is /etc/exim4/exim4.conf:/var/lib/exim4/config.autogenerated
Configuration file is /etc/exim4/exim4.conf

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 12.11
  APT prefers stable-security
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 6.1.0-37-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU threads; PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE not set
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /usr/bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages exim4-daemon-heavy depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]  1.5.82
ii  exim4-base             4.96-15+deb12u7
ii  libc6                  2.36-9+deb12u10
ii  libcrypt1              1:4.4.33-2
ii  libdb5.3               5.3.28+dfsg2-1
ii  libgnutls-dane0        3.7.9-2+deb12u5
ii  libgnutls30            3.7.9-2+deb12u5
ii  libidn12               1.41-1
ii  libidn2-0              2.3.3-1+b1
ii  libldap-2.5-0          2.5.13+dfsg-5
ii  libmariadb3            1:10.11.11-0+deb12u1
ii  libnsl2                1.3.0-2
ii  libpam0g               1.5.2-6+deb12u1
ii  libpcre2-8-0           10.42-1
ii  libperl5.36            5.36.0-7+deb12u2
ii  libpq5                 15.13-0+deb12u1
ii  libsasl2-2             2.1.28+dfsg-10
ii  libspf2-2              1.2.10-7.2+b1
ii  libsqlite3-0           3.40.1-2+deb12u1

exim4-daemon-heavy recommends no packages.

exim4-daemon-heavy suggests no packages.

-- debconf information:
  exim4-daemon-heavy/drec: