Topic: outgoing mail stopped working - solved

[JensK]

HI I have run sme server with webmail for many years. A month ago i upgrade from 6.01 to 7.0. The new webmail is a greast step forward and seemed to work ok for about a month.

Then after i Udated the last time a week ago outgoing mail suddenly stopped.

Ingoing mail is ok except that after the update spam isn't sortet to junkmail folder in the users mailboxes. Likewise freshclam keeps sending messages that it couldn't update.

Internal mail between mailboxes on the server works ok but no one can send mail to any mailaddresses outside ther server.

I have checked the mail logs and in the log it looks like the mail is delivered. If i try to make a smtp logins and mailexchange from the internet it connects ok and exchanges hello, confirmation and delivery ok.

My mail is setup to deliver directly and not going through my isp's mailserver.

As i diagnose it it this started with the latest update. I am running updates manually by loggin as root in and doing a yum update, signal-event post-update, signal-event reboot.

I do this because my update in the server-manager panel somehow dosn't work. It tells me that i have to reconfigure the server and pressing reconfigure dosn't alter anything. EAfter reboot the update state is the same.

Can anybody give me a hint to what I do next to diagnose why outgoing mails isn't working since this is the major issue i have to get solved very quickly. A week without outgoing mail is .......  
regards
JensK

[mmccarn]

Are you having trouble sending email from internal hosts running Outlook, or from users using webmail, or both?

Can you send email using "pine" or "sendmail" from the command prompt?

Are you checking both the qpsmtpd and qmail logs?

What is the reason given by the freshclam logs for failing?

Do you have other Horde modules installed (I think I've seen some posts about recent upgrades breaking webmail for users with other horde modules loaded)?

Do you have any other contribs or programs loaded?  If so, I'd check the log files for those items, and search the forums for info on them, even if it's not obvious how they could keep smtp from working.

Good luck!

[JensK]

The users are only using webmail.

I have no extentions or contribs running except that i have installed the webshare contrib when i upgraded the server a month ago - that is three weeks before this error turned up.

I haven't tried the pine or sendmail as i don't know how to.

Except from the server update panel not working and that I must use the manual yum instead of the admin panel the server is as plain as can be.

Regarding the failing update of freshclam I only get the message "freshclam: Update failed" in the admin mailbox. I haven't had the opportunity to watch the freshclam logs  but wil do when i come home from work.

Likewise i have no installed modules in Horde.

What I do know is that the latest yum update did have a new version of some Horde module. As the update is run i can't se wich module is updated - or at least i don't know where to look. Maybe I can se that in the yum log. I wil investigate that further this evening.
/jk

[Terry]

Have you checked the basic connectivity?  Has your ISP started blocking outbound 25 from their network (commonly done to limit outbound spam from comprimised machines)?  Try and telnet to a known mailserver on port 25, it should answer with something like 220 'FQDN of remote server here' ESMTP.

If you don't get an answer from a remote server, then your ISP may have started blocking, forcing you to relay through their servers.

[JensK]

I have found the error. It was the internal setup of the dns serveraddress that was wrong.

In the setup of sme 7 i have entered static ip adress in the configuration screen. I have entered 192.168.1.2 as dns server for the network. Every once in a while the server reset this dns server adress to it's own address which is 192.168.1.99.I guess this also happened at the last update.

I should have figured this out my self, but you know one often look in the wrong direction when trying to spot the cause of an error.
Jk