Yep, the mail server is definitely running. The VM is actually on a provider's server, one of the many OpenVZ kind you can get to host a site on or whatever, but you can often run mail on them since they are on the provider's connection and should be reachable almost anywhere. I thought I heard once that the popular thing was to not let mail get in from IP's that don't resolve back to something, but what it has to be I'm not sure, thus why the edit reverse thing is in the provider's interface where you can have it reinstalled, restarted, etc, but mine requires a support ticket in stead. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Mustill-Rose" To: "Blind sysadmins list" Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 7:52 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Newbie question about reverse DNS and getting outgoing mail accepted from a small virtual private server

Silly question, but you are running a mail server on your vps aren't you? I usuallyset s subdomain up like mail.domain.com which handles mail. If its a little bit beyond you, try looking into google apps for your domain. Essentially this is all the services like gmail, docs and spreadsheets but using your domain instead of googles.

In this situation, all you would need to do is change the mx record for your domain to point to google and the rest sort of takes care of itsself.

Its fun (Of sorts) to setup a mail server - if you're thinking of becoming a sysadmin then its probably something you should do, but if you need working email quickly, it be best to let google do it and run a mail server in a vm when you have a bit more time.

Hth, Ben.

On 12/09/2011, Brent Harding wrote:

...

Hi there. I've been on here awhile just listening to learn different things. It's also part of why I took the good deal I found on this Virtual Private Server that I used to host my small little blog, to give me the freedom to configure what I chose for what I wanted to experiment with. The promo even came with Direct Admin included, so for $1 extra on their already low price I just added one more IP to get rid of the errors that it needs two for the DNS. My small Wordpress blog runs fine on this virtualized server as I would expect it too, it doesn't know the difference and has all it needs. I never worried about the fact that mail I'd send, even from the web interface logging in with an account I created always hit the bit bucket if I sent to most places, but did seem to work back to my address or if I set my usual address as the destination of a forwarder. I may have to now change to using the domain for my email because this account I've had for so long was only a secondary on a dialup account my parents have, but they are likely getting rid of it to get some kind of wireless instead, so the fun of updating all the sites I know I'm on has to begin some time while I can still get Email at the old address. If mail was sent to an account on my domain I did get it, just not anything I sent out from it, even with the web interface. I checked where whois thought the IP of my VPS pointed, and it shows nothing, so the reverse DNS is blank, which very well could be my problem. I will have to submit a support ticket to the provider to hopefully change it, but I'm confused what to have them set it to. If the hostname of the VPS is server.mydomain.com, mydomain.com being the domain I really have, will having them set it to that be good enough to have mail likely accepted, assuming the IP didn't end up in a blacklist that silently discards everything it sees from it? This isn't just one site that doesn't like my test mails, often subscribe requests to try to migrate list subscriptions over and just getting no confirmation, but most places, so that's why I suspect something like this.

Thanks.

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Some servers reject mail if they can't do a reverse lookup but in my experience very few. It sounds to me like some other problem. Most servers reject mail if they can't do a fforward lookup but not if they can't do a reverse. In other words, if your machine says its mail.example.com, doing a DNS lookup on mail.example.com has to resolve to the same IP address as the IP of the connection. But the IP address you're connecting from doesn't have to resolve to mail.example.com. Lots of places, including the servers I administer, increase the spam score of a message that's from a machine where a reverse lookup doesn't work. But we don't outright reject those messages. They would just be more likely to be marked as spam. And just the reverse lookup itself would not cause a message to be marked as spam. The reason why it usually works that way is to allow people to do exactly what you're trying to do. You have control over your domain name so you can configure a forward lookup. But you can't configure a reverse lookup. Furthermore, your machine is obviously not a zombie because if it was, the forward lookup wouldn't work. Personally, I would consider an MTA broken if it is configured to outright reject mail from machines where it can't do a reverse lookup. It would lead to too many false positives. You should make sure the hostname your MTA is using can be resolved to an A name, not a C name, and try again. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Ben Mustill-Rose" To: "Blind sysadmins list" Sent: Sunday, September 11, 2011 7:52 PM Subject: Re: [Blind-sysadmins] Newbie question about reverse DNS and getting outgoing mail accepted from a small virtual private server

Silly question, but you are running a mail server on your vps aren't you? I usuallyset s subdomain up like mail.domain.com which handles mail. If its a little bit beyond you, try looking into google apps for your domain. Essentially this is all the services like gmail, docs and spreadsheets but using your domain instead of googles.

In this situation, all you would need to do is change the mx record for your domain to point to google and the rest sort of takes care of itsself.

Its fun (Of sorts) to setup a mail server - if you're thinking of becoming a sysadmin then its probably something you should do, but if you need working email quickly, it be best to let google do it and run a mail server in a vm when you have a bit more time.

Hth, Ben.

On 12/09/2011, Brent Harding wrote:

...

Hi there. I've been on here awhile just listening to learn different things. It's also part of why I took the good deal I found on this Virtual Private Server that I used to host my small little blog, to give me the freedom to configure what I chose for what I wanted to experiment with. The promo even came with Direct Admin included, so for $1 extra on their already low price I just added one more IP to get rid of the errors that it needs two for the DNS. My small Wordpress blog runs fine on this virtualized server as I would expect it too, it doesn't know the difference and has all it needs. I never worried about the fact that mail I'd send, even from the web interface logging in with an account I created always hit the bit bucket if I sent to most places, but did seem to work back to my address or if I set my usual address as the destination of a forwarder. I may have to now change to using the domain for my email because this account I've had for so long was only a secondary on a dialup account my parents have, but they are likely getting rid of it to get some kind of wireless instead, so the fun of updating all the sites I know I'm on has to begin some time while I can still get Email at the old address. If mail was sent to an account on my domain I did get it, just not anything I sent out from it, even with the web interface. I checked where whois thought the IP of my VPS pointed, and it shows nothing, so the reverse DNS is blank, which very well could be my problem. I will have to submit a support ticket to the provider to hopefully change it, but I'm confused what to have them set it to. If the hostname of the VPS is server.mydomain.com, mydomain.com being the domain I really have, will having them set it to that be good enough to have mail likely accepted, assuming the IP didn't end up in a blacklist that silently discards everything it sees from it? This isn't just one site that doesn't like my test mails, often subscribe requests to try to migrate list subscriptions over and just getting no confirmation, but most places, so that's why I suspect something like this.

Thanks.

_______________________________________________ Blind-sysadmins mailing list Blind-sysadmins@lists.hodgsonfamily.org http://lists.hodgsonfamily.org/listinfo/blind-sysadmins

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