[SoBe8503]

Hey all... I need some help

Well my lil bro has been trying to get his new Wii connected to our wireless network. He succeeded, but only by resetting the router. So, I had to reconfigure everything. One thing that's pretty important that has yet to start working is the email server I have hosted there. Here's what I think happened...

Becasue the ports were all reset, our registrar that handles the DNS redirections got confused and started sending all emails to the default location which is their email servers. I wanted a backup set just in case something liek this happened. I thought I fixed it, but aparantly not. I deleted all MX records except the ones pointing to my home email server, and now we aren't getting anything.

Can someone help??

 

[chaos40]

How long ago - remember, DNS propogation can take a while.

 

[SoBe8503]

I started fixing it just yesterday, so I know I should wait a couple more days. I was just seeing if anyone would know of anything else I should check.

 

[chaos40]

48 hours max, IMHO. There is some wacky TTL setting I can't recall atm for DNS records, but if you want to make changes you can call your authorotative DNS and change that to their minimum. Then give that 48 hours to propogate. When that has elapsed, you make the "real" change to your mail servers IP and change the DNS record. Because you have shortened that TTL (so to speak, I'm half in the bag and can't recall its actual name LOL!), it propogates very quickly.

THen your authorotative DNS will whine at you to set it back to its default and you can let them 'cause you've already made the change.

 

[SoBe8503]

Alright well it just got fixed last night.

But it was my fault, aparantly. Maybe someone here can explain it to me. I finally got some test emails back stating that they have been delayed, and it gave me some clues. It said that it was trying to reach the SMTP side of the mail server, in which I had the ports blocked. I only had the pop3 ports opened to my server, because I thought thats all I needed.

Can someone explain this??

 

[BFRD]

It is my understanding that port 25 is required to be open to receive mail as well as sending. Port 110 (POP3) is required to be open to allow a POP client to access mail already on the server. The SMTP server facilitates the transmission and receipt of mail. While it is commonly understood that SMTP is required to be opened to send mail it is also required to receive it. The POP3 access is only for reading mail already on the server.

I did a little testing with my server. I lost the ability to receive mail with SMTP closed off.

 

[chaos40]

BFRD has it right. Port 25, by default, is used to send and receive email. Port 110 is used to retrieve email by mail clients only. It isn't used in, typical, mail server - to - mail server data transfers.