I have not been able to send mail, but i am able to receive it. That's what has brought me to this question. every time i try and send mail i get 'no route to host', but i am able to receive it fine. I have tried flushing my iptables and everything seems configured right in my mozilla mail client. What is strange is up untill I started running up2date, everything was fine. I've even tried telneting to other mail servers on port 25 and that doesn't work. can anyone help?

no ideas?

hmm, this could be firewall, routing, or dns related. Do you get no route to host messages when you try to telnet or pop3 to say, mail.somewhere .com only, or do you get the same message if you try to connect via the remote's ip address as well? Try the ip, if that works then it is probably DNS related. Check your routing table for anything odd also. Sounds like you have eliminated your firewall as a problem, but if you are behind another firewall box or appliance or a proxy, you will need to look there as well

i tried telneting to the ip's everything seem to resolve here is a copy.

Non-authoritative answer:
Name: mail.blanks.us
Address: 66.252.10.247

[root@linux etc]# telnet 66.252.10.247 113
Trying 66.252.10.247...
Connected to 66.252.10.247.
Escape character is '^]'.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^]
telnet> quit
Connection closed.
[root@linux etc]# telnet 66.252.10.247 25
Trying 66.252.10.247...
telnet: connect to address 66.252.10.247: No route to host

Name: mail.lomag.net
Address: 208.185.81.14

[root@linux etc]# telnet 208.185.81.14 25
Trying 208.185.81.14...
telnet: connect to address 208.185.81.14: No route to host
[root@linux etc]# telnet 208.185.81.14 113
Trying 208.185.81.14...
Connected to 208.185.81.14.
Escape character is '^]'.
help
0 , 0 : ERROR : INVALID-PORT
Connection closed by foreign host.

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Im positive that the isp isnt bloocking any ports, and Im not running through any proxies, but here is a copy of my routing table.

/sbin/route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface
192.168.254.1 * 255.255.255.255 UH 0 0 0 ppp0
127.0.0.0 * 255.0.0.0 U 0 0 0 lo
default 192.168.254.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 ppp0

## ifconfig
[root@linux lost+found]# /sbin/ifconfig
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:92 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:92 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:5992 (5.8 Kb) TX bytes:5992 (5.8 Kb)

ppp0 Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol
inet addr:64.24.88.170 P-t-P:192.168.254.1 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1634 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1923 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
RX bytes:1080095 (1.0 Mb) TX bytes:261173 (255.0 Kb)