pop server randomly not accepting certain email accounts
I have had an email server running for about a month now, and I have had no problems thus far. However, now that I added a new domain and 4 accounts, I'm having a problem only with those accounts. I followed the guide for setting up ubuntu 10.04 with postfix and dovecot on the linode library. I added the email users and domain the exact same as I did for the others that work, but these 4 users on this single domain whenever I try and log in with my email client it says err authentication failed, which my mail client claims is a wrong password error. However, I am absolutely (I mean absolutely) certain that the password I have entered is correct. I am guessing it has something to do with the user name, but I can't get what. The weirdest thing is that when looking at /var/log/mail.log, it doesn't show a shred of evidence that the connection is even taking place. For example it will say connection from blahblah
Thanks,
-Michael.
4 Replies
@lilmike:
The weirdest thing is that when looking at /var/log/mail.log, it doesn't show a shred of evidence that the connection is even taking place.
Which would suggest that your email login is in fact going to a different server. Perhaps you've changed DNS, and the change hasn't yet propagated? Or maybe you made a mistake in the DNS?
Start by reviewing all DNS settings for the domain.
Yeah… that was the problem -- my finger slipped up when typing in the 71, and put a 72…
Now the only other problem I'm having is that mail is not being delivered from places like hotmail or the list I tried subscribing to. Hotmail says the email was delayed. I tried whatsmydns.net, and they claimed every nameserver they tried was the right ip (at least everyone they tried was the one it should be). For the record, the email domain that is working for example is mail.mtgames.org, and the one that is being delayed was mail.speedofsoundgaming.com. I'm getting email to my mtgames.org email just fine, and as I'm transfering over to this domain, I have them forwarded to my new email -- although I would guess that doesn't mean much as it's on the same server.
Any help is appreciated.
Thanks,
-Michael.
Edit: I tried this tool:
1) I think you are confusing mail server name with mail domains.
It is kind of unusual for someone to send email as
A mail server can provide email support for many domains, including domains that are not related to it.
It would appear, that your mail server is actually mail.mtgames.org, but that is not really clear.
2) You have an MX record for mtgames.com which is good, you don't for speedofgaming.com. In general it is a good idea to have an MX record that points to the mail server for that mail domain. In some cases, not having an MX record is a negative score item.
3) Not sure if you are sending email out as
You have a problem if you are using the wrong mail domain since those hostnames point to different IP's…. (you have no MX records to clearly say where email for that domain should go)
mail.speedofsoundgaming.com IN A 96.126.113.71
speedofsoundgaming.com IN A 72.14.189.72
4) As an aside you have some host names which resolve to IP's that have no PTR records…
mtgames.org. 30 IN A 108.162.194.112
mtgames.org. 30 IN A 108.162.194.12
5) You need to make sure that the mail server for your speedofgaming.com mail domain is setup to do validation checks for the email addresses it is sending as. if the remote server can't validate your sending email address, you will get deferred a lot and in some cases never be accepted.
Meaning that if you are sending email as
6) in general…… mail server name = IP = mail server name = good.
if your mail server says it is mail.xyz.com the IP it is using should point back to the same name. While web browsers could care less as long as they can find the webserver, Mail servers use that type of check to help validate that the sender is valid and not some bot infected workstation faking the email.
And again the mail server name is not necessarily related to the mail domains you are sending email as.
7) SPF records help your cause. With larger mail systems so do DKIM and other validation signatures.
you can check to see what a server thinks of your email by sending email to:
It will send back a report with results it found for SPF, DomainKeys, DKIM, Sender-ID results.
Note that it includes SpamAssassin result… so you hope to see Ham, not Spam.
More details information on your part would have provided better insight into what your issues.
Thanks for that – it helped alot. I put in speedofsoundgaming.com for the host field in my domain registrar's mx records column… but apparently I was supposed to put @ (DOH!) As for spf, I've not really heard of that much, and I don't really know where to begin setting up that. As regards mtgames.org and the IP addresses, that is probably because I use cloudflare for my dns for that domain (and would for speedofsoundgaming.com too if they hadn't made the interface inaccessible) so it's probably a cloudflare problem -- I would guess.
Thanks,
-Michael.
P.S. I am sending email from speedofsoundgaming.com not mail.speedofsoundgaming.com -- perhaps I confused the terminology -- sorry about that.