Users cannont send email via cell phones anymore...

[WiKDMoNKY]

About a month ago, all of my users with iPhones and Smartphones can receive email, but cannot send email. Blackberry users who use the web interface to setup their email still work fine.

The error is:

The following errors occured while sending and receiving messages:

The outgoing mail server cannot send or recieve messages at this time. Try again later.


Nothing has changed on the server (settings wise) and I have tried everything I can think of to make it work.

I personally have a Smartphone and I can receive email, but cannot send.

Has anyone else had this issue or does anyone have any tips on how to fix it? It worked for about 5 months then stopped. There are about 200 email accounts that are on the server and all of them work fine when using their computers or webmail.

Thanks in advance!!!

 

[faris]

Just a guess, but it is possible that the cellphone networks are blocking port 25, or have been blacklisted in a dnsbl that you use.

Unfrtunately the error you quote isn't something generated by Plesk - something somewhere is translating a real error into something else, making it difficult to trace.

Have a look in /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog when you try to send a message to see if there is anything useful in there.

(The above is for Centos/RedHat type linux -- it may be different for other flavours)

Faris.

 

[shoggy24]

I had the same problem when i use the DNS zones for DNSBL service in plesk (just as Faris mentioned above), I had to uncheck the option and all cell phones were able to send and recieve but i install spamdyke to reduce spam after disabling that option.

 

[WiKDMoNKY]

I was under the impresion the the RBL list I used was only for incoming email, not outgoing.

I have tried changing the outgoing ports on the phones and it still gives the same error. I run my server on 25 and 30 (outgoing ports).

I just dont know why it started all of a sudden and all the desktop users have no issues at all.

 

[shoggy24]

The RBL will check the incoming IP address of the cell phone trying to relay message through it, if the IP is listed the relay request will be rejected, i dont know if it's a bug or it actually find the IP listed but i know it blocks e-mail sent from cell phones.
For the sake of troubleshooting you may want to uncheck the option restart qmail and see if it helped.

 

[WiKDMoNKY]

What did you have ot uncheck to make it work?

 

[shoggy24]

From the control panel, Server -> Mail -> uncheck option "Switch on spam protection based on DNS blackhole lists" restart qmail, the test to see if it works.

Monitor qmail activities from command line by entering tail -f /usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog

 

[WiKDMoNKY]

But that would effectively disable my spam protection. Is there any way to disable the outgoing lookup on the RBL?

 

[shoggy24]

I dont think so but maybe someone will come along and tell you how.
To be honest with you i had more trouble with that settings than it helped with spam especially after installing spamdyke i realized how much spamdyke worked better without the hassles.

You can find spamdyke installation ideas here
http://forum.swsoft.com/showthread.php?t=50494&highlight=greylisting

and here

http://www.blueoryx.info/linux_administration/spamdyke

 

[WiKDMoNKY]

As soon as I enabled the RBL zen.spamhous.org, the spam pretty much stopped completely. I was getting 200 or more a day, now I get 1 or 2 a week.

There has to be a solution to this besides disabling the RBL. Can I add the cell providers network IP address(es) to the whitelist?

 

[shoggy24]

Can I add the cell providers network IP address(es) to the whitelist?

I am pretty sure that will be pointless and wont help since IP address of a cell phone user will depend on his/her location and it will constantly change. not to mention running the risk of opening your mail server to spam relaying from all the IP address you will be adding.

 

[faris]

The easiest thing to do is create a second smtp instance on port 587, with no dnsrbls.

You'll find step by step instructions for this if you search for "smtp port 587" or something similar on the forum.

Plesk 8.4 has does this for you, but previous versions needed you to do it yourself.

It is stupidly easy. You just copy smtp_psa to smtp_587, change the word smtp at the top of that file to the word submission, remove any dnsrbl commands in the final line, open your firewall for port 587 then restart xinetd.

You will have to tell your customers to use port 587 instead of 25 in their email settings though.

Now, the other option is to install spamdyke (again search the forums for step by step instructions). As long as the users are using full smtp authentication (pop-before relay will not work at all with spamdyke) then spamdyke will allow them to send email even if they are on a blacklist. Note that when using spamdyke you configure dnsrbls through spamdyke's configuration file and would disable it in Plesk.

Faris.