Finally got email server set up, questions about sending.

[Dillinger]

Alright I have a domain with dyndns.org and have an MX record through it so I decided to set up an email server on my server. I followed this guide, http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.p...asc&highlight= so a quick glance would show the full setup. Basically I recieve mail at tyler@dillinger.homelinux.org and can now send to a couple locations (hotmail, my account on my friends server). But after I got this all set up I tried sending mail to an AOL account and had no luck. That's when I started reading about how a lot of providers don't accept email from servers like mine, they see them as open relays and spam. Then I followed the part in the guide about having it go through my ISPs SMTP server before it hits the net, and its still causing problems. The address even got banned from my ISP when I tried to email my account on there, I got this link in a failed delivery notice http://security.rr.com/mail_blocks.htm#security So basically I'm not sure what to do. I've been reading on some sites like http://spf.pobox.com/faq.html about ways to prevent this but none of them seem to be helping. I don't want to have to send through my ISP because to me that kind of defeats the purpose of having your own email server. If anyone has done this before and can give me some advice or some links I'd appreciate it greatly.

[jmschuur]

Some mailservers check if the server that sends the e-mail is an open relay server. If it is, the receiving mailserver wont accept your e-mail (anti spam policy). (search on www.google.com. you'll find a lot of information there). And some server wont accept your e-mail when you've not set up a reverse DNS entry (check here: http://www.dnsreport.com/)
Hope it helps!

[Dolda2000]

I just checked your mailserver, Dillinger, and rest assured it's not an open relay (it successfully denied my relay request). I wouldn't expect your ISP's servers to be willing to relay your mail though. They will probably refuse to relay mails that don't have their source domain.

It's a hard to solve problem, and I honestly wouldn't bet that it's even possible. Try mailing AOL about the issue and see if that really is what is going on, and, if it is, try to convince them to whitelist you.

[nikhil]

Dillinger,

one quick question...for the MX record in dyndns.org did you use their mailhop forward service or your own servername? in other words can you tell me what you entered in the Mail Exchanger field?

Thanks.

[ouijongbu]

ahh my sendmaily challenged chum, i have just the answer for you. right so, you know your /etc/mail/ folder? you do? good! well use your most special text editor to add a file named "relay-domians" in that, and add all the domains you want into it. say you wanna email to AOL, add "aol.com" (without quotes). It works for me. hope it works for you. ohh i almost forgot, once you do that, you need to restart the sendmail daemon.

[Dillinger]

First off thanks for all the replies, I greatly appreciated. Secondly I too confirmed my server isn't an open relay through www.ordb.org (I should have known considering I'm using SMTP-AUTH and only people on my network can send email). My email finally went through to the people I sent to AOL and now it goes speedy fast so maybe they were just checking to make sure I wasn't a spammer. I also registered a yahoo account to make sure it goes there and it does, also goes to hotmail. So right now the only site so far giving me issues is my ISP ironically, but I sent an email to their removal department explaining my situation so hopefully I'll have some results soon. I don't really see what else I can do to show I'm not a spammer and am not an open relay. I've been checking out http://spf.pobox.com/ but the only way to set SPF records through dyndns.org at least is through the custom service which I don't really want to pay for. Does anyone knows of another place I can register a SPF record? As for ouijongbu in one of the many threads I've read on this whole subject so far I came accross something you were talking about. He was only relaying mail to the servers that were causing him problems. He edited his main.cf to use relay through his ISP only for certain servers. I don't see why ISPs would want people doing that though. I'm not really sure the legalitys of it or what not, I'm still not really sure what relaying through your ISPs SMTP entails exactly. Would the sending address still be mine? I'd try it but I don't want my ISP calling me up and giving me hastle. Thanks again for all the words of advice on this topic, its helping me learn a lot!

[Dolda2000]

There might not be a problem with relaying through your ISP's MTA. It depends on how they've configured it. I'm guessing that they have configured it so that you can't send a mail with another originating address than that of their domain name. Since you probably want to send mails with your domain name in the originating adress, that would cause a problem in that case (the ISP's MTA will probably refuse to relay the mail).

As long as you are able to send mails directly from your MTA, it's probably always better to do so.