postfix and email client problems
I'm running ISP Config 3.0.3.2 (incl. Postfix) based server on Ubuntu 10.04. Everything has been working fine but suddenly SMTP connections from email clients stopped working for all domains.
This is what I know so far:
1) "telnet xxx.members.linode.com 25" reports immediately
220 xxx.members.linode.com ESMTP Postfix (Ubuntu)
so looks like postfix is alive
2) Thunderbird client reports "server timed out". Windows Live Mail same error, basically.
3) /var/log/mail.log and /var/log/mail.err don't have any errors.
Any ideas or suggestions? Would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Jani
6 Replies
Either you have firewall rules in place that are causing this, or your other test source is blocking 25 outbound.
Whats your ip? ill test from here
@Internat:
linode do not block port 25.
Either you have firewall rules in place that are causing this, or your other test source is blocking 25 outbound.
exactly, it's actually likely that your ISP is blocking outbound 25. Set your server to listen to 2525 or something like that in addition to 25 and try it out.
So it does look like ISP firewall issue. However, what puzzles me is that email clients suddenly stopped working from multiple locations in multiple countries - including several US ISPs and several Vietnam-based ISPs. I have not changed any server settings or anything, so "something in the middle" has changed.
I guess I try next to change the port. Thanks for your suggestion! I report back here if I have any success fixing this.
Thanks again,
Jani
A two-second change, add a firewall rule to allow the traffic in, and restart your postfix instance & firewall instance and you're done.
To listen on both tcp port 25 and 587, modify /etc/postfix/master.cf (or whatever path your Postfix configuration resides within), and uncomment the line beginning with "submission inet", which should be found immediately below your 'smtp inet' line:
smtp inet n - n - - smtpd
submission inet n - n - - smtpd
Modify your firewall to allow inbound tcp 587 traffic (as wide open or as restricted for the port as you prefer), reload your firewall rules/restart your firewall and reload or restart Postfix. You can confirm postfix is bound to port 587 via netstat -plan as root:
# netstat -plan | grep "master" | grep tcp
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:587 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 3227/master
tcp 0 0 0.0.0.0:25 0.0.0.0:* LISTEN 3227/master
tcp 0 0 :::587 :::* LISTEN 3227/master
tcp 0 0 :::25 :::* LISTEN 3227/master
Here Postfix is listening on all interfaces on both IPv4 and IPv6 on both tcp ports 25 and 587.
Additionally, you can just telnet to port 587 from localhost and from your ISP connection.