Need some SMTP troubleshooting help - Please!.

[fouldragon at aol.com]

One thing I find annoying about the way the maillog works-- at least 
the way I've got qmail set up, there's a little abstraction you have to 
follow to really track what's going on

If you search for the email addresses that fail in the maillog, you'll 
see lines like:

"starting delivery 2357: msg 56535272 to remote username at yahoo.com"

Search for the delivery number now-- you'll see, miles down, something 
like

"delivery 2357: deferral: 
216.39.53.3_failed_after_I_sent_the_message./Remote_host_said:_421_Messag
e_temporarily_deferred_-_4.16.51._Please_refer_to_http://help.yahoo.com/h
elp/us/mail/defer/defer-06.html/"

The funny thing is that the automated mailings (i. e. from website 
order systems) go through fairly quickly, but things like legitimate 
business mail with attachments, in particular tends to sit for 4, 6, 8 
hours at a shot before they'll bless you with the gift of acceptance.  
I bet their thing isn't that they dislike spam, it's that they dislike 
a 200k attachment because they could store 50 4k misspelled-drugs 
messages in its stead.

It astonishes me that their customers will put up with slow, 
unpredictable mail delivery.  If mail doesn't get to or from my Gmail 
box in 5 minutes, I usually figure something's wrong.


-----Original Message-----
From: Richard Wilson <relw at mchsi.com>
To: Main PLUG discussion list <plug-discuss at lists.plug.phoenix.az.us>
Cc: Arizona State University Linux Users Group <ASULUG at asu.edu>
Sent: Wed, 12 Mar 2008 9:49 pm
Subject: Re: Need some SMTP troubleshooting help - Please!.










You can check your IP address on dnsstuff.com -- one of their services
checks to see if you're listed on any of 200+ Antispam services.

You can also try a manual session, doing a telnet to a.mx.mail.yahoo.com
(or any of their other mail relays -- "dig yahoo.com mx" will give you
the list) and seeing what it is they don't like about you (I assume
conerstonehome.com in the example that follows):

telnet a.mx.mail.yahoo.com 25
(wait for CONNECT msg)
HELO mailserver.cornerstonehom.com
(wait for 2XX response)
MAIL From: <id at cornerstonehome.com>
(wait for response)
RCPT To: <id at yahoo.com>
(wait for response)
DATA
send something here
.
QUIT

You may get a 4XX ("soft"/temp) or 5xx (Hard) reject on one of the
responses that should indicate why they don't like you.

HTH,

Richard Wilson
(yes I have the "privilege" of getting mail addressed to postmaster at
too darn many domains...)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
--

On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 19:23 -0700, Bryan O'Neal wrote:
> Ok I have a problem in that I am (still) unable to send anything to
> Yahoo, or any domain who's email is hosted by Yahoo.  I don't get a 
NDR,
> it is as if I simply can not connect and I get nothing in my logs!  I
> believe it is connection oriented because three boxes (Two exchange
> domains and one sendmail) with three external IP's have one common 
point
> and that is one border router with one T1 connection.  But I can not 
get
> any response out of Yahoo and I can not give any details because I 
have
> never had to trouble shoot down to this level before.
>
> Any suggestions on how to figure out what the *&!@$#! is going on with
> my SMTP connections to Yahoo?
>
> Bryan O'Neal
> Cornerstone Homes & Development, Inc.
> 4220 E. McDowell Rd Ste. #108
> Mesa, AZ 85215
> (480) 505-1900
> http://www.cornerstonehome.com
>
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