Yes, I thing a dynamic IP address with a rDNS liker that is going to cause you problems. Try using MercuryC with your ISPs SMTP host as a relay host and see what happens.
Hi, I am not just a newbie, but an ignorant newbie. So, please have patience with me. Here goes...
I registered domain "thebowman.net" from godaddy.com. I went into the Total DNS control and set 2 A records, @ and mail, which both point to my IP. I then set all the Cnames for @, which points to my domain. I setup MX records as smtp.thebowman.net and mailstore1.thebowman.net, all as per godaddy.com tech support.
I setup my account in Thunderbird with pop and smtp servers: pop.thebowman.net and smtp.thebowman.net for email address give@thebowman.net.
I setup Mercury with a user "give". Under Core Module I setup the internet name for this system as thebowman.net. I set the local domains as thebowman.net, thebowman, and my IP. I don't know much else I have changed.
Now, I can send email to give@thebowman.net from other email addresses and it works no problem. I have actually been receiving email from that account for some time with no problems. So, I know I have something right.
But, I cannot send mail using smtp.thebowman.net. It gets to the server. I see it in the Mercury SMTP Server window. It used to go all the way to the Core Module and then after several retries it would cancel saying loop detected. But, I just tried it and once it hit the SMTP server it killed Mercury. A winodow popped up saying "Mercury/32 Core Processing Module v4.52 has encountered a problem and needs to close. We are sorry for the inconvenience." and Mercury shuts down. Everytime I restart Mercury it just gives me this error and closes. I noticed before this that if I tried to edit the core module settings it would give me the same error, but figured I'd just leave it alone.
Any help would be appreciated.
FWIW: I have a P4 2.4Ghz system running XP Pro. I originally installed XAMP, which gave me Mercury 3.5, or something. I recently installed an XAMP upgrade that gave me Mercury 4.52. Maybe something in the upgrade went bonkers, I don't know.
Larry
Update: If I leave it alone and don't click on the "Don't Send" button on the error window Mercury will continue to run and I can still receive email thru it. But, cannot send email at all.
Ok, for some unknown reason I no longer get the error message. I switched from MercuryC to MercuryE, input an IP address for a Name Server, and now my mail is no longer looping. But, I get an email to the admin account stating:
The attached message has failed delivery and has been referred
to you as postmaster. The following error report or reports
were given to explain the problem:
*** **********@mail2web.com
550-Your attempt to send email to *************@mail2web.com has been blocked
Seems to be several problems here. As sending through MercuryE works there was apparently some configuration problem with MercuryC. There could be some issue with the local domains settings in Mercury core, so you should probably check that.
For incoming mail it seems your primary MX is OK but the secondary can't be found:
Domain thebowman.net has 2 mail-servers.
<<< 220 thebowman.net ESMTP server ready.
Answer from ns19.domaincontrol.com: host mailstore1.thebowman.net not found.
Can you send messages to other recipients than mail2web.com?
/Rolf
Yeah, I don't even know what that mailstore1.thebowman.net is. I just put that there because Tech Support at godaddy.com told me to. Is that a problem?
Also, after posting yesterday I installed XAMP with Mercury 4.52 on my laptop and set everything up on it. Now, I am no longer getting the core module error. Here is what I am getting on MercuryE
Connection error during handshake with 68.28.3.32.
Connection error during handshake with 64.136.52.37.
Connection error during handshake with 64.136.44.37.
12:04:50: processing job MO000004
Resolved MX for 'sprintpcs.com' to 68.28.3.32
Resolved MX for 'juno.com' to 64.136.52.37
Connecting to 68.28.3.32
Connection error.
Connecting to 64.136.52.37
Connection error.
Attempting connection to alternate, 64.136.44.37
Connection error on alternate.
And this on MercuryS
Connection from 71.189.12.71, Tue Jan 29 12:04:37 2008
EHLO [192.168.20.2]
MAIL FROM:<give@thebowman.net> SIZE=445
RCPT TO:<***********@sprintpcs.com>
RCPT TO:<************@juno.com>
DATA - 14 lines, 445 bytes.
QUIT
0 sec. elapsed, connection closed Tue Jan 29 12:04:37 2008
So, no I cannot send to any recipients. They are getting to Mercury, but not thru Mercury. Again, any help would be greatly appreciated.
The Laptop is a Core2 Duo 1.73GHZ, running Vista Premium.
Larry
All these messages indicate you are being blocked somehow. Might be your firewall blocking Mercury/32, might be the receiving system blocking yuor IP address. Turn on session logging in MercuryE and see what happens when you try to send. There may be some plain text in the session log that can tell you why you're being rejected. There is nothing wrong in MercuryS that I can see. There is also the good possibility that yuor ISP is blocking port 25 outbound.
Alright, I turned on session logging in MercuryE.
Someone told me once that I had to have something called Reverse DNS or most servers wouldn't even acknowledge that I was there. I have googled reverse DNS and cannot understand it. Any ideas if that is my problem? Or if I even need that and how to set it up if I do?
[quote user="thebowman"]
Alright, I turned on session logging in MercuryE.
Someone told me once that I had to have something called Reverse DNS or most servers wouldn't even acknowledge that I was there. I have googled reverse DNS and cannot understand it. Any ideas if that is my problem? Or if I even need that and how to set it up if I do?
[/quote]
The rDNS checks the PTR record. What they are doing is taking the IP address of the connecting host and checking to see if there is a valid PTR record. It does not necessarily have the match the host name given in the EHLO string but it must not be empty. There are a number of places that will not accept connections where the PTR record indicate the IP address is one of the rendomly assigned IP addresses. That said your IP address looks like it it randomly assigned for a pool and I would expect that you would have some problems delivering to the big ISPs
Answer Section:
thebowman.net, A, 71.189.12.71
Answer Section:
71.12.189.71.IN-ADDR.ARPA, PTR, pool-71-189-12-71.lsanca.fios.verizon.net
Yeah, I don't even know what that mailstore1.thebowman.net is. I just
put that there because Tech Support at godaddy.com told me to. Is that
a problem?
It could delay mail slightly but shouldn't stop anything from coming through. But it's probably considered bad manners to have an undefined MX host, so I think you should do something about it. You can remove it (there is no requirement to have two MX records), or you could find a mail server that is willing to act as secondary for your domain. Your ISP might have such a service.
/Rolf
[quote user="Thomas R. Stephenson"]
The rDNS checks the PTR record. What they are doing is taking the IP address of the connecting host and checking to see if there is a valid PTR record. It does not necessarily have the match the host name given in the EHLO string but it must not be empty. There are a number of places that will not accept connections where the PTR record indicate the IP address is one of the rendomly assigned IP addresses. That said your IP address looks like it it randomly assigned for a pool and I would expect that you would have some problems delivering to the big ISPs
Answer Section:
thebowman.net, A, 71.189.12.71
Answer Section:
71.12.189.71.IN-ADDR.ARPA, PTR, pool-71-189-12-71.lsanca.fios.verizon.net
[/quote]
Yeah, my IP is Dynamic. I am using Verizon FiOS and so far I have found that it takes a major down time to lose my IP, so I figured I'd go ahead and host my own email server. If my IP changes I can just go to godaddy.com and update my A record, as rare as I expect that to be I didn't think it would be a problem.
So, do you think that might be the problem? If so, is there no way to fix it without going static ip?
Again, I appreciate all your help.
And I'm going to remove that other mx record now.
