I only have one instance of Mercury running. You are right, I did setup two MX records, smtp.aviandirectory.uk and mail.aviandirectory.uk because I was not sure if I needed both.
I just deleted the MX record mail.aviandirectory.uk. Will post a screenshot of the GoDaddy settings, I am no pro, but I am trying the best I can.

I will make the changes in Mercury and post back the results

OK, I am assuming when adding the domain name to MercuryS and MercuryC and general settings you were referring to 'Announce myself as'? the other settings only allowed me to enter an IP.

Anyway I ran the test again (might be a bit too soon but did it anyway), this was the result now.

and during the connection to Mercury, in the scratch folder this was produced by MercuryS.

20:38:28.436: --- 28 Aug 2023, 20:38:28.436 ---
20:38:28.436: Accepted connection from '18.209.86.113', port 25, timeout 30 secs.
20:38:28.440: Connection from 18.209.86.113, Mon Aug 28, 20:38:28
20:38:28.440: << 220 aviandirectory.uk ESMTP server ready.<cr><lf>
20:38:28.712: >> EHLO keeper-us-east-1d.mxtoolbox.com<cr><lf>
20:38:28.712: << 250-aviandirectory.uk Hello keeper-us-east-1d.mxtoolbox.com; ESMTPs are:<cr><lf>
20:38:28.712: << 250-TIME<cr><lf>
20:38:28.712: << 250-SIZE<cr><lf>
20:38:28.712: << 250-STARTTLS<cr><lf>
20:38:28.712: << 250 HELP<cr><lf>
20:38:29.088: >> MAIL FROM:<supertool@mxtoolboxsmtpdiag.com><cr><lf>
20:38:29.112: << 250 Sender OK - send RCPTs.<cr><lf>
20:38:29.333: >> RCPT TO:<test@mxtoolboxsmtpdiag.com><cr><lf>
20:38:29.333: << 553 We do not relay non-local mail, sorry.<cr><lf>
20:38:29.553: >> QUIT<cr><lf>
20:38:29.553: << 221 aviandirectory.uk Service closing channel.<cr><lf>
20:38:29.553: --- Connection closed at 28 Aug 2023, 20:38:29.553. ---
20:38:29.553:

Dion,

I am not familiar with DNS at GoDaddy but I think you need to make some corrections:
a: A record for mail should be deleted as you are not using this record
b: A record for smtp should read smtp.aviandirectory.uk as it has to reflect the MX record
c: CNAME email, not sure if you need this one. Or do you use this hostname ?
your spf record needs some addition and correction It should read:
v=spf1 mx a ip4:89.240.5.180 mx:smtp.aviendirectory.uk -all

So much for your DNS

Your session log from the MX-Toolbox shows that you are able to receive emails on port 25.
And yes, I was referring to those settings.
Can you make a few screen shots of your Mercury-C Configuration window and of each tab? Just xx username & password. As port 25 is not working, try port 587, assuming talk talk has this one open. You have to make sure that this port is open in your firewall from inside your LAN to the outside.

Another thought: you as customer of talk talk, they must have given you an email account with username & password and connection settings. If you would use an email client to send your emails, you would need those settings. And Mercury-C does exactly that, sending emails like an email program with username&password as Authentication against your talk talk account and the receiving mail server of talk talk.

Johannes

They only gave me connection settings which consists of my phone number followed by the @talktalkbusiness.net and a password. I have no email account with them, I would have to buy an email account from them as a package upgrade. I tried sending an email to my fonenumber@talktalkbusiness.net but get a reply from their postmaster, cm9nec rejected your message to the following email addresses:. The address you sent your message to wasn't found at the destination domain. It might be misspelled or it might not exist. Try to fix the problem by doing one or more of the following.

I had set up Mercury to use ports 25 and 465 with SSL/TLS enabled because I was getting error reports saying my domain does not support TLS or secure connections or something but worked fine with ports 465 and 25.

These are the settings from MercuryS and MercuryC

Talk talk are not really that helpful when asking for my login information, they don't seem to really know anything at all.

Here is the last mxtoolbox result after making the changes at GoDaddy

I thought I would show you the settings from talktalk on how to setup emails. I do not actually have an email with them and they do not mention anywhere in the settings about using a password yet in their support messages to me, they gave me a username and password.

Dion,

there are several things you may want to change, BUT first I would like to know on which email plan are you of those 3 options? Pipex or Freedom or Gotadsl ? According to your ports used, either freedom or gotadsl. But according to your username&password you are using talkatlk business email.

Can you clear that and than we go from there.

Johannes

I have never used any of the bottom settings, as far as I know I do not have any plans with Pipex or Freedom2Surf or Gotadsl. I always connected using the settings in the top photo on port 25 and no SSL.

I never really used any username or password to login to their pop servers neither and as far as I can remember those fields were left blank in Mercury. Because I was trying to connect using TLS I was trying usernames and passwords they gave me.

Some of the usernames I was given was phonenumber@talktalkbusiness.net dion2u2002@hotmail.com and dion@aviandirectory.uk. I was trying all of them but could never connect using TLS or SSL. dion2u2002@hotmail.com was the email I first registered with on talktalkbusiness.net until I asked them to change it to dion@aviandirectory.uk and that was also my login email/username to their website.

It doesn't seem to matter what username and password I use, None of them seem to allow me to connect

By the way, when I was trying to get support from talktalk, they told me to use these settings...

Dear Dion, Thank you for contacting the TalkTalk Business Domain Admin Team. I do apologise for the inconvenience this has caused you. To confirm that TalkTalk customers should be using the following server details when sending and receiving via TalkTalk network: Inbound Server: mail.overssl.net Port: 993 (IMAP) or 995 (POP3) Select TLS/SSL if option. Outbound Server: mail.overssl.net Port: 465 Select TLS/SSL if option. Set authentication to ‘Password’ if option. If you should have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us. Kind regards, Tetchie Domain Admin Team | TalkTalk Business

Just before the above reply from talktalk they also offered me these details.

Dear Dion, Thank you for contacting the TalkTalk Business Domain Admin Team. For your username and password on the mail servers, I think you are the only one who knows that. But please you may try the credentials below hoping it will work in your end. Username: phonenumber@talktalkbusiness.net Password: D7E7W4Z6Q5 I hope this helps! If you should have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us. Kind regards, Tetchie Domain Admin Team | TalkTalk Business

Dion,

it looks to me that you are on a hunt for the correct connections as talktalk is no help at all.
My suggestion: start Mercury module by module.
Mercury-C, try using port 587 with STARTTLS. You are using port 465 which is a direct SSL connection.
So 2 options here: 587 with STARTTLS with smtp.dial.pipex.com, according to your image.
or 465 with direct SSL with mail.overssl.net
With the latter, you have to change the option field in Mercury-C. In addition disable (un-tick) for testing the prior pop3 login just to disable a further error. You have already set username&password for authentication. I would try all 2 settings with and without authentication.

And if that does not work, you still can do a test just for fun with the pop3 settings outgoing server of the first image using talktalk, port 25, no tls, no authentication.

Is there no other ISP you can use ?

Johannes

OK trying some of those settings
I tried sending myself a private message on my site using the web form, You can see there is a connection attempt on Mercury SMTP Server GUI but no messages are queued. This is the file produced in the SCRATCH > MercuryS folder.
TCP-230830-2002-2.MS
contents >

20:02:04.867: --- 30 Aug 2023, 20:02:04.867 ---
20:02:04.867: Accepted connection from '127.0.0.1', port 25, timeout 30 secs.
20:02:04.867: Connection from 127.0.0.1, Wed Aug 30, 20:02:04
20:02:04.867: << 220 smtp.aviandirectory.uk ESMTP server ready.<cr><lf>
20:02:04.867: >> EHLO www.aviandirectory.uk<cr><lf>
20:02:04.871: << 250-smtp.aviandirectory.uk Hello www.aviandirectory.uk; ESMTPs are:<cr><lf>
20:02:04.871: << 250-TIME<cr><lf>
20:02:04.871: << 250-SIZE<cr><lf>
20:02:04.871: << 250-STARTTLS<cr><lf>
20:02:04.871: << 250 HELP<cr><lf>
20:02:04.871: >> STARTTLS<cr><lf>
20:02:04.871: << 220 OK, begin SSL/TLS negotiation now.<cr><lf>
20:02:05.144: [] SSL/TLS session established
20:02:05.144: [] TLS_AES_256_GCM_SHA384, TLSv1.3, Kx=any, Au=any, Enc=AESGCM(256), Mac=AEAD<lf>
20:02:05.144: [] No peer certificate presented.
20:02:05.144: 26: SSL_read returned zero (socket was closed)
20:02:05.144: >>
20:02:05.144: [] OpenSSL secure session normally terminated.
20:02:05.144: --- Connection closed at 30 Aug 2023, 20:02:05.144. ---
20:02:05.144:

Dion,
you are jumping from Mercury-C to Mercury-S. Not good.

Do you want to work now on C or S ?
If S, please provide the general tab, connection controll tab and SSL tab. And than we work that up.

On another note: Can you name both Mercury Certificates? And where are they located?

Johannes

I thought Mercury-C and Mercury-S worked together? In fact, I am not really sure any more how they work, lol.

I really need my ISP to give me my credentials so that I can tell if it is a username/password issue or a network issue etc. The internet they provide is really cheap but their service sux big time.

Here is my certbot dir

By the way, I was just trying MercuryC and MercuryS to see if I could get any different results. I also wanted to say that using MercuryE works perfectly, connects fine but many email services reject emails sent from my server here

Dion,

Do you really want to run an email server?

That tells me port 25 is not blocked. You have to work on Mercury-C as it is is the sending module using a smart host, as you can not use Mercury-E to send emails as you quoted above.
I gave you some suggestions a little earlier in which way to test sending emails with Mercury-C.

About your Certificates, if aviendirectory.uk.pem is a copy of fullchain.pem and if aviendirectory.uk.prk.pem is a copy of privkey.pem and you have entered the full path of C:\certbot\live\aviandirectory.uk\aviendirectory.uk.pem in Mercury's moduls in the SSL certificate file location, that should be ok.

That's what I thought, you are cheap! I like to help, but I have only so much time to spend helping people.
My advice: get to work on Mercury-C and show some results. And don't jump from one module to the other.

Johannes

If you ever need help or advice for a sick bird, I am more than happy to help, you never know.

I have contacted my ISP and have asked for a valid username and password so I can use their smtp servers, I have also asked to check to see if I am on any blocklist at their end.
I have tried every username/password and host name also ports 25, 465 and 587, it is either time out, incorrect credentials or network error.

I will post back later if they can provide me with what I should already have. Thanks again for your help 'Tips-Hat' to you

Well, I am still in the same boat. I keep asking my internet provider for my login credentials but their reply is always the same, they keep telling me that only I know what that is. If I knew what it was then I would not be asking them.

I do have a question though, can Mercury send mail directly to a person without having to be relayed by my ISP or other service? If that was an option, then I would definitely take that route.

Back again. I finally got to talk to someone who knows what they are talking about at TTB. They have sent me this email with the following directions...

Dear Dion,

Thank you for contacting the TalkTalk Business Customer Services Team.

I check your screenshot that you send for your settings.

CONFIGURATION OF MERCURY C (Please see attached screenshot)

Smart host name: smtp.talktalk.net

Connection port/type: 465 - SSL encryption using direct connection

Announce myself as: leave it blank, do not put anything

Under Credentials for SMTP authentication, if required.

Login username: @@@@@@_@aviandirectory.uk

Password: @@@@@@

Please put check mark to this option "Do not use CRAM-MD5 authentication even if smart host advertises it."

Confirm these changes by clicking "OK".

ALLOWING REMOTE CLIENT TO SEND (Please see attached screenshot)

Mercury/32 comes with a non RFC compliant filter rule that might prevent sending mails from hosts other than the Mercury/32 server itself.

To change the filter rule to be RFC compliant and allow sending mails from other hosts locate the file ìtransfltr.merì in your Mercury/32 installation folder and open it with an editor. Locate the following rule that can be found nearly the end of the file as shown below: H, "[EHeh][EHeh]LO +[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]*", R, "554 Invalid HELO format"

Replace the line with the following rule: H, "[EHeh][EHeh]LO +[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+.[0-9]+.*", X, "" Save the file and restart Mercury/32 if necessary.

Please let me know if it's working. I hope this helps.

If you should have any further queries, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Kind regards,

Riziel

Customer Service | TalkTalk Business

The problem is, I can not find the file ìtransfltr.merì anywhere in my installation? Is this from an older version of Mercury? How can I make the edit they are telling me and where? thanks

The transflt.mer file was perhaps removed from the XAMPP package, if not it should be in the main Mercury directory. However, this file has nothing whatsoever to do with MercuryC's interactions with the TalkTalkBusiness smarthost, so you can just ignore the comment.

The mentioned rule prevents devices to connect to MercuryS with an incorrect IPv4 address literal in the SMTP HELO greeting. That blocks a lot of spammers, but may block some badly configured legitimate devices as well, so it's optional to remove that line if desired. The suggested patch is nonsense though.

Other than that you should as noted earlier never expose MercuryS directly to the Internet with settings based on the XAMPP configuration.

ok so I finally got an answer from TTB, They are now blocking port 25 and only allowing people to send emails if you have an email account with them (which I find weird as they are no longer offering emails to anyone).

Can Mercury send out emails without using their SMTP servers? If so how can this be done, thanks

Communication between mail transport agents relies on using SMTP on port 25, so if that port is blocked for outgoing traffic MercuryE won't be able to send anything out.

If TTB provide a smarthost service using another port, as mentioned earlier, MercuryC should be able to rely through that server though. Settings need to be correct for that to work, obviously.