Topic: Sending mail from Clients Problem

[slang]

Van wrote:

> This is a problem here as well -- my users are from 3 sets of
> public IP addresses

Point 1: SME server isn't designed for clients sending from public IP addresses - usually clients are on a local network with private IP addresses.

Point 2: If there are delays, it's likely because reverse DNS isn't set up correctly for the sending IP addresses. Reverse DNS for those addresses is not under the control of the SME server.

Charlie

Hi Charlie and Co.

Interestingly, I too seem to be having this problem, ever since putting in 6.0. I'm no bunny when it comes to mail systems, but this one is starting to annoy me, hence I'm likely to start missing obvious solutions...

My SME 6.0 is on a DMZ (192.168.3.0/24), and it's authorive dns for the networks that my LAN PC's are on (192.168.2.0/24). This is of course a different network than the local eth0 interface on SME.

The LAN network is listed in SME as being a local network, an I've configured hosts for my internal PC's.

For some reason, SME just won't do a successful reverse lookup, even though it should be authoritive. dig -x 192.168.2.129 fails, although dig -x 192.168.3.1 succeeds.

My LAN PC's are on 192.168.2.0/24, and because SME can't reverse resolve these, it takes time.

I'm not familiar with the tinydns/dnscache software, so haven't made much progress yet.

The same configuration worked fine with SME 5.6 (which was based on bind.)

Anyone have any suggestions?

[cyberdude]

Hi!!

I have the same problem, but with the buield in webmail in the sme 5.6
In the log i can se a similar posts "did not recive identification string from..."

But this problem ONLY accours when i conects to the internet throug our new router with DHCP

If i put my netcable directly to our ISP's adsl modem i easily can send mail from webmail but if the router is between me and the adsl modem i get timeouts

Havent find a solution.... yet

[Van]

This problem is now front and center -- my mail server itself has no reverse dns - mail is being rejected from my users sending to other domains --

will it help to create an entry  in tinydns for a reverse record? I do not have a dns server right now

Should I go to my ISP - Sprint and have them create a reverse record?
I am a bunny on this stuff, or maybe dumber than that

Will appreciate the help

[van]

Got Sprint to create the reverse DNS -- some of the problem mail is going through now. I'm now looking to build the dream mail server -- I want:
 
1 host multiple domains and IP ranges
2 offer secure email with encryption
3 I'd like a probation / white list system that returns mail from senders that the user hasn't yet appoved until they send a form or such to verify who they are
4 I want everything else that I haven;t thought of but will realize I should have between now and now+2 yrs

and now for the howto for the complete bunny?

[smeghead]

Hi all

I recently ran into a similar problem on a client site with some systems.

The upshot of my investigation was that Nortons Antivirus was the culprit - it was messing with the mail before it even got to the SME server and causing the delays or timeouts.

As we were moving to a different A/V product we basically uninstalled it and the problems disappeared.

HTH

[cyberdude]

hi!

I have no antivirus program instaled on the clients that are unable to send mail throug webmail....

I have now 2 clients that have an ?DSL conection with their ovn router at the LAN net....., and when conecting directly throu the ISP the problem dissapere....

So the problem is in the router / firevall in the router / NAT-DHCP section in the router...

[rshiras]

Outlook status bar says receiving 1 of n messages because there are n messages in the <user>/Maildir/cur directory.  If I log into webmail, I see that I have already deleted the e-mails that these files (in the cur directory) represent.
So I think the problem is that qmail is not removing the files when it should.
Are we getting closer to a solution?

[ryan]

I am just throwing this out....MS has released several critical updates in the past few weeks.  Could these be impacting Outlook?  Many suggest the problem just started recently.

ryan

[precisenz]

I've got the same problem since we upgraded a client from 5.6 to 6.0.  They're using Outlook 2003 with all the latest updates on one machine, plus Outlook 2002 on another.

The only way they can clear their mail each day is to try it, and reboot if it doesn't work.

Software being used:
SME 6.0, Server only mode
Windows XP & 2000
Outlook 2002 & 2003

Any further ideas?

[Brenno]

I may be suffering from similar problems.

More often than not, when I try to send email from Outlook Express through my SME6.0b2 server via IMAP, Outlook cannot move the message into the sent-mail folder after it has sent (which is what I configured OE to do,) and in some cases, it doesn't appear to be sending the mail at all.

I've always had a problem moving mail from Outlook Express' local folders on the SME's IMAP folders (see my previous posts,) but now this may be affecting mail delivery.  3 test messages sent to another account where Express couldn't move the file to the sent-items folder on SME weren't delivered at all.

I can't find any errors in any of the logs on the server.  This has been going on since I set up the server less than two weeks ago, but it is getting worse each day.  I have increased the timeout limit in Outlook, but that's ineffective since the transaction is not timing out - it's simply not occuring at all.

Would it make sense to specify my ISP's SMTP server in the email settings of SME so it's used instead of the native SMTP engine?

[Brenno]

Since I was concerned that this was an Outlook express problem, I connected to my SME server at home via Evolution.  To my dismay, I had the same problem!  Then I logged in to the same account via webmail and found difficulties there.  Could this be SME?

Here's some symptoms:

In Evolution, when sending mail, it reports an internal error but indicates the mail was sent.  A copy of the mail is left in the local folder Outbox and the mail is confirmed as being delivered.  If I hit Send/Receive, a second copy of the email is delivered and the message is moved from the local folder Outbox to the sent-mail items in the IMAP folders where two copies of the same message now appear!

In Outlook Express, when sending mail, it reports an internal error.  No indication is made as to whether or not the mail was sent (sometimes it is, sometimes not.)  No copy of the email is left in a local folder, and it isn't moved to the IMAP server folders - it's essentially gone.

In WebMail, I can compose/forward a message and appear to send it fine.  But I sent three messages to a test account and only found two of them in my sent-mail folder afterwards.  (In all cases, "save a copy in 'sent mail'" was checked.)  All three emails were delivered.

Looks to me like SME is having some problems putting sent messages into the right place when it's done.  Anyone else encountering this?  Is it possibly related to other issues in this thread?  Are they symptoms of the same problem?

[Brenno]

In an effort to see if other clients could work properly, I installed Thunderbird on my laptop and used that.  It, too, has the same problem - it's sending email just fine, but every time it attempts to move the message to the sent-mail folder on the server, I get an internal message.

The only good thing about Thunderbird is that it prompts to see if you want to try again.  When you select Yes, it moves the message to the sent-mail folder without any problems.

I'm pretty surprised that nobody has responded to this thus far.  I don't understand how I could be the only one this is happening to, or who has had this happen to them in the past.

Nobody has any suggestions for a fix?  Ideas as to what to look for?

Help?

[Jon_Reynolds]

Has anybody found a solution to this problem? I am now seeing it here as well.

What I did to try and fix this was to install secure email and then reconfigured outlook to authenticate from the server. This way the server would allow a user to relay through the server. It stopped the 451 not a valid rcpthosts but now it is taking a long time to connect using telnet to the 465 port. Using telnet from one of my linux boxes it connects to the ssl port of 465 instantly. Doing the same from an M$ client it never seems to connect to the port. I am not sure if this is how windows operates when trying to connect to a secure port or not.

Is there a contrib that will allow someone to easily setup tinydns so I can use my sme 6.0.1-01 as the dns and configure reverse dns to see if that clears it up?

Some where there has to be a solution for this error.

Jon

[Brenno]

I'm at wits' end here!

I've finally tried storing the sent emails on a different folder on the IMAP server to see if that was related somehow.  Of course, I still experience exactly the same problem.  Virtually all clients tried (including webmail,) fail to move a copy of the sent message to any folder on the SME server after sending the message.

Is this a bug in SME's implementation of IMAP?  I'd assume not, or they're be more discussion on it.  Is it then specific to my installation and if so, does anyone have any suggestions as to what to look for and/or how to fix it?

I hate to consider this, but I might have to move all my clients back to POP mail.

[Jon_Reynolds]

Not sure if this will help anyone else but I fixed it on my end. I had 3 problems that I needed to solve.

My setup was DSL-->Router-->SME-6.01-01

 My users kept getting the dreaded '451' rcpt hosts error. This one was easy, we were doing DHCP from our router so qmail was thinking they were not local. I made all clients reboot and used DHCP from the SME and that solved the 451 error locally.

 I installed 'securemail' from pagefault.org and used smtp auth so that my users outside of the local network that were not getting DHCP from the SME could send through my SMTP server.

 What I was seeing was that certain emails would send but others wouldn't. The ones that would send were going outside my ISP, e.g. hotmail,yahoomail...etc, I could even receive emails from these sites as well.

 The ones that would not go out were going through my ISP, my clients were configured to use our ISP to send and our POP3 server to receive. Yet even when we sent through webmail the same problems would occur. We set everyone up to use SMTP Auth and the problem remained.

I would send an email and it would simply disappear. It would leave my network and what happened to it I had no idea.  

I re-installed the SME and at the point were it asked about my DNS server I put my ISP's DNS address and all of a sudden everything started working. The mails that had disappeared were bouncing back to my ISP and sitting in their queue.

Maybe this doesn't help anybody else but maybe it will,

Jon