Outlook E-mail Problem

[OOagent137]

For some reason, I can't send any e-mail on our server. Outlook says the SMTP server is not responding. I have tried Outlook and Outlook Express. It was working a day ago and no settings have changed.

I have tried restarting the Qmail service and even restarting the whole server to no avail. The other admin on the server says that Outlook won't send mail for him either (and in fact, that it never has been able to send mail), so he uses incredimail for e-mail.

Now, I'm thinking that this is a server issue, b/c the most popular mail client in the world (or so I'm guessing) should work with our server. What do you guys think? Server problem? If so, how do I fix it?

[Tino Didriksen]

Not sure about Qmail, but it's not uncommon for SMTPd's to be configured to only allow localhost to send mail by default.

Better check that the world is even allowed to send mail, and better make sure they can only send after auth'ing (else you'll be an open relay).

[brent]

If you telnet in to port 25, does it answer? What error does Outlook give (in the log window)?

[OOagent137]

Well, I don't think we've misconfigured it b/c it was working yesterday for me.

I tried it w/ Mozilla Mail (Thunderbird) and no luck there, basically both said the SMTP port wasn't responding, so I think it's a server issue. The exact error Outlook gave was "Outlook is unable to connect to your outgoing SMTP e-mail server. If you continue to receive this message, contact your server administrator or Internet service provider (ISP)."

I don't know to much about telnet, but this is what happened:

Microsoft Telnet> o **.***.**.*** 25
Connecting To **.***.**.***...Could not open connection to the host, on port 25:
Connect failed

Now, that IP that I used was the same one I SSH into the server w/, so I assume that's the correct IP to use. Any thoughts?

[brent]

Originally posted by OOagent137
I don't know to much about telnet, but this is what happened:

Microsoft Telnet> o **.***.**.*** 25
Connecting To **.***.**.***...Could not open connection to the host, on port 25:
Connect failed

Now, that IP that I used was the same one I SSH into the server w/, so I assume that's the correct IP to use. Any thoughts?
Qmail is obviously not listening on the port so something is screwy. Check in /var/log/messages. Is there anything in there you can see pertaining to qmail? A startup error of some sort maybe? Or possibly a core dump? I just thought of something else... log into your server (ssh) and do a a telnet 127.0.0.1 25. If that works, try a telnet xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 25. Two things I'm thinking here: 1] Your ISP is blocking port 25 (this is becoming fairly normal practice) or 2] qmail is listening only on the localhost ip. I suspect #1 only because you said it was working fine.

[OOagent137]

Well, I looked around in the log file and did a word search on qmail. The only thing I could find was a qmail is being shutdown and qmail is being started messages. There didn't seem to be any errors. I also searched for the word "dump" but didn't find any entries.

Here are the results of my telnet:

[root@s1 httpdocs]# telnet 127.0.0.1 25
Trying 127.0.0.1...
Connected to 127.0.0.1.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 domain.com ESMTP
Connection closed by foreign host.

I let it sit there for a few a bit, it took forever to get that "Connection closed by foreign host." error.

Basically, I got the same thing when I tried to do that with the IP address I SSH into the server w/.

I'm at a university right now, so you think they've blocked SMTP?

How do I find that out? If that's the case, how do I get around that (I need the ability to send e-mail)?

[Tino Didriksen]

You can run the SMTP daemon on multiple ports.

I've had to run my Sendmail on both 25 and 125 because one of my user's ISP blocks all traffic in port 25.

No idea how to do that with QMail, though.

[knightfoo]

You can do something silly like a port redirect with iptables:

iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp -m tcp --dport 125 -j REDIRECT --to-ports 25


This will cause all traffic to port 125 to be sent to port 25 locally.

-knightfoo

[OOagent137]

Well, using the university SMTP servers allowed me to send e-mail, so it may not be a ISP issue. Is there any definate way to check that? I don't have mail servers hosted on a different webserver.

Oh, and knightfoo, I'm running Windows XP on my computer. Thus, I don't have iptables :(

Any other suggestions?