Topic: pop e-mail does not work but www/ftp work fine

[Rick Bowers]

My ISP supplies me with a static IP address so I'd still to run my own mail server off the e-smith system. The reasoning is two-fold.

First, I'm only given 5MB of e-mail storage on the ISP's mail server. Since I belong to a few mailing lists, it doesn't take long to fill that space. If I'm out of town for 3 - 4 days (which happens about once a month), my mailbox fills up and messages start to bounce.

Secondly, my ISP currently does not support domain name hosting and allows me only 2 e-mail names. I'd like to assign each of my family members (5) their own mail ID.

I setup a domain forwarding environment with dhs.org (BTW: yi.org, pointed to by the documentation is no longer accepting new members). I can connect to my e-smith server with my browser (www.mydomain.dhs.org) and see my e-smith web page. I can also connect using an FTP client (ftp.mydomain.dhs.org) and can get/put files, but cannot send mail (user@mydomain.dhs.org). When I try, I get the following error.

message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. The following address(es) failed:

user@mydomain.dhs.org:
SMTP error from remote mailer after RCPT TO::
host pop.mydomain.dhs.org [24.240.xxx.yyy]:
553 sorry, that domain isn't in my list of allowed rcpthosts (#5.7.1)


Is there a configuration parameter I missed on the e-smith server? I added accounts, and setup mail as "standard".

If I try using eudora from my "internal" network to read e-mail, I get the message "connection refused"

dhs.org points to my IP address which is connected to a Linksys Cable/DSL Router.  Attached to the router is my e-smith gateway/server.  I have setup the "external" IP address of the e-smith server as a DMZ in the Linksys firewall setup to allow all traffic through to the e-smith server.

[Garret]

If I am not mistaken, you need to set up the mx record for your domain. This ought to be accomplished by your dns servers. Without mx records the dns servers won't find your mail server.

BTW

A great DNS host is mydomain.com. You can register your domain (which is like $14.95 a year right now, through them) you can have it point to any ip, and you can set your own mx records;o).

Once you set mx records you will be able to receive mail from anywhere and send it anywhere also, which is what it sounds like you're looking for.

At that point you can create as many mail boxes as you want on your e-smith machine, based and users.

Garret

[Dan Brown]

This problem is not caused by lack of an mx record.  The problem is that the e-smith server doesn't seem to recognize its own name.  When you're configuring the server, you need to set its domain to mydomain.dhs.org.

Just as an overview on MX records...
Suppose that I set up mydomain.com.  Because it's a fairly big site, I set up a separate mail server, mail.mydomain.com.  I need to set up an MX record pointing mail for mydomain.com to mail.mydomain.com.

In this case, assuming (as likely) that mydomain.dhs.org, www.mydomain.dhs.org, mail.mydomain.dhs.org, etc. all resolve to the same machine, there's no need for an MX record.

As to domain registration and DNS hosting, I registered my domain through www.gandi.net for 12 Euros/year.  DNS is handled by www.zoneedit.com, which is free for up to 5 domains.  If you want to handle DNS for more than 5 domains, you can pay zoneedit, or use soa.granitecanyon.com, who is free for any number of domains.