Email not getting through

WorldBuilder · 05-28-2008, 06:59 AM

Hi all,

Built a server (Red Hat 8) waaaaaaay back in 2001 which houses, among other things, my family's email. Run it in my basement on a cable ISP (Comcast). It uses Sendmail. Every few months, Comcast changes my IP address and when that happens, I have to go and redirect the DNS in my Network Solutions page. Well, this happened two weeks ago. Always worked fine in the past, but for some reason it is now not working. The weird thing is that the website is up, but email is not working. Test mails return with the following error:

Quote:

Technical details of permanent failure:
PERM_FAILURE: Gmail tried to deliver your message, but it was rejected by the recipient domain. We recommend contacting the other email provider for further information about the cause of this error. The error that the other server returned was: 553 553 5.3.0 Message from 209.85.132.243 rejected - see http://njabl.org/lookup? 209.85.132.243 (state 13).

The domain is bartlett-family.net. I've checked and Sendmail is running. I even restarted it to be sure. I need some troubleshooting help as I don't know whether this is an issue with address resolution or a more local problem. I'd greatly appreciate any assistance!

Chris

blacky_5251 · 05-29-2008, 12:56 AM

It could be that GMail has rejected your email because it is not from a fixed IP address. Some email systems out there will not receive email from dynamically assigned ip addresses.

The solution is to use SMARTHOST and send all of your emails to your ISP's email server for redistribution. This is what I do, but I use Postfix so I can't help you with the sendmail changes you'll need to make.

Hope that helps

Ian

EDIT: It may be more likely that the IP address you have now has been used previously by a spambot and has a bad reputation with the DNSBL crowd. The solution is the same though, relay your mail via your ISP.

Wim Sturkenboom · 05-29-2008, 01:54 AM

Did you go to njabl.org? The given IP address is blacklisted in some way on the recipient's mail server.
So your config is OK. Test some other email addresses.

http://njabl.org/cgi-bin/lookup.cgi?...209.85.132.243 and follow the 'click here' link which will take you to http://openrbl.org/query?i=209.85.132.243

You can test webmaster at rhc dot org dot za if you want; please put Hi Wim in the subject line. I know that that hosting provider does not block spam.

WorldBuilder · 05-30-2008, 10:23 PM

Hi all,

Thanks for your input. I've checked into the blacklisting and am hoping to be off the few I'm on soon. But I've now noticed something else and I can't help but think there's a connection. My server is giving me repeated messages saying:

Quote:

96.128.48.1 sent an invalid ICMP error to a broadcast.

I have no idea what this means and don't know what this address is. What I do know is that if I traceroute it from a Windows clients I get:

Quote:

c:\>tracert 96.128.48.1

Tracing route to 96.128.48.1 over a maximum of 30 hops

1 <1 ms <1 ms <1 ms 192.168.5.1
2 7 ms 9 ms 7 ms 96.128.48.1

Trace complete.

The 192.168.5.1 is the address of the server itself (eth1), which is facing my LAN. ETH0 is facing the ISP and is getting the address via DHCP. So whatever this other address is, it's only one hop away and I don't see how that is possible. Have I been hacked somehow? Hijacked?

Help! E-mail has been down for a week now...

Best,

Chris

blacky_5251 · 05-30-2008, 11:18 PM

You haven't been hacked - at least I don't think you have been. "dig -x" reveals that IP address belongs to Comcast, so you're probably safe, although as I explained initially I'm not a sendmail expert so I can't interpret the message for you. Here's what "dig" tells us about the suspect IP address:-

Code:

2.6.18-53.1.19.el5xen[ian@www ~]$ dig -x 96.128.48.1

; <<>> DiG 9.3.3rc2 <<>> -x 96.128.48.1
;; global options:  printcmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NXDOMAIN, id: 59173
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 0, AUTHORITY: 1, ADDITIONAL: 0

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;1.48.128.96.in-addr.arpa.      IN      PTR

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
128.96.in-addr.arpa.    600     IN      SOA     dns1.inflow.pa.bo.comcast.net. dnsadmin.cable.comcast.com.128.96.in-addr.arpa. 2 10800 3600 604800 600

;; Query time: 486 msec
;; SERVER: 192.231.203.132#53(192.231.203.132)
;; WHEN: Sat May 31 13:44:01 2008
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 134

2.6.18-53.1.19.el5xen[ian@www ~]$

Anyway, I still suggest you use smarthost. I believe you're emails will get through to gmail if the source IP belongs to your ISP.

WorldBuilder · 05-31-2008, 07:01 AM

Hello again Ian,

Thanks so much for all your help. Let me say, though, that I do relay mail through Comcast (smtp.comcast.net). That was the only way it ever worked. Now, bear in mind that the original error I posted above is not when I try to send from my domain to Gmail, but rather from Gmail to my domain. I am getting very weird behavior here. A few things...

1. When I send a mail from Gmail to my address at my domain, I get the error you see in my original post.

2. When I try to send an email from my domain ON the server to Gmail using the mail command, I get no errors, but no mail delivery either. Never shows up in Gmail, but doesn't seem to error out locally. Is there a log I can check?

3. If I login to the server as root, I can send mail to other users. For example, I logged in as root and typed "mail chris". I sent it. I then checked that chris account on a Windows machine on the LAN with Outlook Express and it was there!

Does that clarify my issue a little more? Sorry if I was unclear earlier.

This is driving me quite nuts...

Chris

blacky_5251 · 06-01-2008, 12:13 AM

Perhaps your DNSBL list contains a bad server? This happened to me once where one of the server I checked for RBL and DNSBL went bad. I removed it from the list and mail was back to normal again.

Back to your original post, the error reported from your server to your gmail account is that the IP address 209.85.132.243 has been rejected based on information from njabl.org. Now the IP address 209.85.132.243 is one of Googles, so I don't know why it would be on anyone's bad list. Perhaps you can't rely on njabl.org anymore?