Hey guys, I'm the sysadmin for a healthcare supply company and we're having a lot of problems with email lately. We are using SME 7.2 as our mail server.
We have the server installed in serveronly mode with mail set to retrieve from 1and1's (our domain registrar) pop3 servers in multi-drop mode and outgoing mail going straight out via smtp.
The initial problem was with outgoing mail, due to the fact our mail server was sending HELO as gompels.co.uk when the PTR record showed is as xx-xx-xx-xx.bethere.co.uk (bethere being our ISP). This led us to being marked as sending a forged helo by many mail servers and meaning our mail got rejected. The domain gompels.co.uk points to the name servers of our web host with the mx record pointing to 1and1 (the web host proved unreliable for email) and there is a DNS zone set up for the SME server pointing at its external static ip (well, the ip of the ipcop gateway on our adsl line).
The other mail server that sends as gompels.co.uk is at our hosting company in the states as we have phplist running there to send out our monthly promotional emails (to registered customers who have opted-in). For an as yet unknown reason a change in the php install there sent phplist into a loop and it send out multiple emails to the whole mailing list over a period of 48h.
Since then the problem of our mail being rejected due to us being marked as spammers has widened (even though we don't seem to be listed on any of the major spam blacklists (spamhaus et al). This means lots of deffered mail and 550 errors and a massive mail queue of deffered messages.
This seems to have stopped our mail server from receiving the multi-drop mail (i can see it all sitting at 1and1 through their webmail).
I have set the outgiong mail to relay via our host in the states in order to try and resolve the smtp/dns issues and have cleared the qmail queue but still I get nothing coming in on the pop3 (which is a bit of an issue since all of our web orders come in via email).
I'm reasonably well experienced with adminning linux boxen and have consulted a few other people i know who are more experience than I on this and we seem to have got nowhere. Any ideas?
EDIT: I have just checked trying to telnet from the sme box into pop.1and1.co.uk on port 110 and seem to get no response but i can connect to it from any of the desktops (which go through the same gateway). the plot thickens...
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