Exchange help part 3

[Butters]

Hi all,

Thanks to those who have helped me recently set this up.

The server now has a fully static IP address yet I am still having some issues:

For some reason, when I send a test email from my btinternet account, it never arrives and I never receive an error. Yet, if I send TO my btinternet account, I receive emails from '@mydomain.com' fine. Even replying to them doesn't work.

This also happens when I fill in the sites 'contact us' form and submit. This submits an email to [email protected] through a third party (i.e., the emails come from [email protected]) and not [email protected].

This needs to be sorted as priority as these are business impacting mails.

I have asked TSOHOST to alter the MX record so that all mails for mail.myFULLdomain.com now route to the server via IP address (which they have done). I have also told Exchange to relay mail through plusnet and mail.myFULLdomain.com and the problem still exists. (even though when I just had pop3 set up using mail.myFULLdomian.com everything worked).

Lastly, and please bear with me, I ran a test on DNSSTUFF and I get the two following warnings under the mail section:-

WARNING: One or more of your mailservers is claiming to be a host other than what it really is (the SMTP greeting should be a 3-digit code, followed by a space or a dash, then the host name). If your mailserver sends out E-mail using this domain in its EHLO or HELO, your E-mail might get blocked by anti-spam software. This is also a technical violation of RFC821 4.3 (and RFC2821 4.3.1). Note that the hostname given in the SMTP greeting should have an A record pointing back to the same server. Note that this one test may use a cached DNS record.

and

Your domain does not have an SPF record. This means that spammers can easily send out E-mail that looks like it came from your domain, which can make your domain look bad (if the recipient thinks you really sent it), and can cost you money (when people complain to you, rather than the spammer). You may want to add an SPF record ASAP, as 01 Oct 2004 was the target date for domains to have SPF records in place (Hotmail, for example, started checking SPF records on 01 Oct 2004).

 

[csmager]

The first error means that you've told the world (through DNS records) that your mailserver is called 'mail.domain.com'. When you connect to your mailserver, it is announcing it's called 'internalname.domain.com'.

You can change this in some SMTP option buried somewhere - but it might not be an issue.

The SPF record is only needed if you're sending your own mail - if you're relaying through a smart host, then you should be ok. This would only affect your outgoing mail.

The problem you have is with incoming mail... and to be honest, it's nearly impossible to diagnose unless you give us the domain name we're looking at here.

 

[Butters]

Well, here is the next funny thing.

When I try to send mail from my Outlook client to @mydomain.com it doesn't get sent. No errors or anything.

but if I log on to www.btinternet.com and access my account that way, it works. If I compose an email using the web interface and send it, it arrives at the relevant user directly.

the contact us part of the website however, still does not work.

the domain is www.elitepropertysearch.com (registrar is 123-Reg, Hosting provided by TSOHost (nameservers point to TSOHost), the mx record is mail.elitepropertysearch.com which points to the server running exchange and the internal mail server is eliteserver.elite.com

Hope this helps.

Thanks

 

[csmager]

Is it possible that you only very recently changed these DNS entries? It may be that the mailserver you're sending through on Outlook is sending via an SMTP server that still has the old MX records for your domain.

Looking at the DNSStuff report myself, it's definitely connecting to your Exchange server (I thought it may be going wrong there...).

 

[Butters]

Is it possible that you only very recently changed these DNS entries? It may be that the mailserver you're sending through on Outlook is sending via an SMTP server that still has the old MX records for your domain.

Looking at the DNSStuff report myself, it's definitely connecting to your Exchange server (I thought it may be going wrong there...).

Well, TSOHost made the change yesterday afternoon. the MX record (to then point to mail.elitepropertysearch.com) was changed this morning at 7:30 ish.

BT have stopped me sending mail through a client unless I use a different SMTP connection but it still doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

In addition, why would all test emails to info@ work, yet when the online form is submitted, it none of the group recipients recieve anything?

Thanks so far

 

[csmager]

It's all probably because the MX record has just been changed - some servers (that you may have been attempting to use before 7.30am) will have the old records, and might not take change for 24hrs.

 

[Butters]

I found the problem.

Tsohost had to remove the domain from the local domain entries on their side of things as all mails were being classed as unroutable and ending up in a default mail account under my domain at tsohost.

its all sorted now

thanks