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Setup a Mail Server


virtualspy
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The postfix server cannot receive mail from the Internet. I have the following setup:

 

Cable Internet connection - my Domain name provider setup points MX records to my TZO account, which points all Internet traffic from my Domain name to my dynamic IP address, and my Firewall forwarding port 25 to the Linux server.

 

Server setup - Postfix is setup with my Domain name as final destination. I have a Win2000 server running DNS for the purpose of creating a "local" entry forwarding email (MX) traffic to the Linux server. The Win2000 server was already on the network, but I installed DNS as part of troubleshooting the mail routing problem.

 

There has to be something I'm missing. I have checked high and low, but could find very little documenation on mail routing. The outgoing email works fine, incoming is the problem. Any help would be great! Let me know if I left out any configuration info above. Cheers. -vspy

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I had the same problems, as you. I just put it aside until someone else posted the same senario. I was using www.no-ip.com, and had the MX records all setup, I could send email locally on the network, but could not get anything going to the outside or in from pop3 accounts using www.no-ip.com. As far as I could tell, DNS through no-ip.com was setup correctly and working. For now I am just using SMTP/Postfix locally with LogSentry to automatically scan my logs on an hourly basis, and report anything it found via SMTP on localhost. Let me know how you make out. I will be watching this one.

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I've never heard of pinging a specific port.  I can ping the external IP, yes, but that task is performed by the firewall/router, not the Linux server.

 

I can access the WEBMIN web page (and other Apache web pages) hosted by the Linux server externally from the Internet.

 

So your firewall is forwarding port 25 packets too your linux server?

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The IP Forwarding is setup on the firewall to forward port 25 to Linux. However, I can't telnet into that port externally from a Windows computer...shouldn't I be able to? The other IP Forwarding works as expected.

 

Also, I noticed there's no SMTP service in the list of services ...is it part of postfix or another service altogether? I checked both the Mandrake v9 and v9.1 CD's but could not see a separate install RPM for SMTP. Is it part of "mailman"?

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The IP Forwarding is setup on the firewall to forward port 25 to Linux.  However, I can't telnet into that port externally from a Windows computer...shouldn't I be able to?  The other IP Forwarding works as expected.

 

Also, I noticed there's no SMTP service in the list of services ...is it part of postfix or another service altogether?  I checked both the Mandrake v9 and v9.1 CD's but could not see a separate install RPM for SMTP.  Is it part of "mailman"?

 

smtp is handled by postfix

 

you should be able to connect i think

 

[john@administrator john]$ telnet 192.168.0.1 25

Trying 192.168.0.1...

Connected to server.uroxsys.co.nz (192.168.0.1).

Escape character is '^]'.

220 server.uroxsys.co.nz ESMTP Postfix (1.1.11) (Mandrake Linux)

^]



telnet> quit

Connection closed.

[john@administrator john]$

 

As you can see Postfix accepts connections on port 25.

This was from inside the internal network though.

Not to mention that you should never allow telnet access from the internet

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I think the problem is my ISP blocks port 25 (the bastards). They also block 80, but I have web requests the Domain forwarding to a different port, which is why the web server works. I am almost positive this is the problem. I have read that more and more ISP's are blocking that port "in the fight against spam". Really it's to promote their "business-level internet access" which costs twice as much, but with non-blocked ports.

 

Tomorrow I am taking the server to a location that does not block ports and I will let you all know if it still doesn't work. Thanks for all your help to this point.

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I think the problem is my ISP blocks port 25 (the bastards).  They also block 80, but I have web requests the Domain forwarding to a different port, which is why the web server works.  I am almost positive this is the problem.  I have read that more and more ISP's are blocking that port "in the fight against spam".  Really it's to promote their "business-level internet access" which costs twice as much, but with non-blocked ports.

 

Tomorrow I am taking the server to a location that does not block ports and I will let you all know if it still doesn't work.  Thanks for all your help to this point.

 

Ahhh of course.

 

Apparantly that is fairly common.

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