Email Issues With AOL Despite RDNS And No IP Blocks
Jan 25, 2008
This is an issue I've been having for a few months now and haven't been able to resolve yet with my data center, AOL support and the company who manages the server for me. My main reason for posting this is for a fresh set of eyes and to see if anyone else has had a similar problem in the past (and how they fixed it)
The issue is this:
I set up a dedicated server to host my web design clients a few months back and no one has been able to send to or receive mail from AOL addresses. I've gone through everything at the postmaster.aol.com site and have ensured that reverse DNS records are in place for all IPs associated with the server, as rDNS is a mandatory requirement for AOL.
Once my support requested was finally elevated to a real AOL support tech, they confirmed that my IP was not being blocked by their servers and are still under the impression that the problem must be on my end somewhere. Because this problem only occurs with AOL (we can send/receive with all other big providers - yahoo, hotmail, gmail, hush, etc), my server management team are fairly certain it must be an issue on AOL's side.
When sending mail from an AOL address, it bounces back with an error like so (real emails replaced with example addresses):
451 <email@exampledomain.com>... exampledomain.com: Name server timeout
Message could not be delivered for 2 hours
Message will be deleted from queue
When sending mail from my server, it bounces back with an error like so:
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
exampleaddress@aol.com
retry timeout exceeded
When attempting to manually deliver a message to AOL from the Mail Queue in WHM, I get an error like so:
Message xxx-example-number is not frozen
delivering xxx-example-number
Connecting to emr-d01.mx.aol.com [205.188.159.2]:25 ... failed: Connection timed out (timeout=5m)
LOG: MAIN
emr-d01.mx.aol.com [205.188.159.2] Connection timed out
Connecting to emr-m01.mx.aol.com [64.12.136.169]:25 ... failed: Connection timed out (timeout=5m)
LOG: MAIN
emr-m01.mx.aol.com [64.12.136.169] Connection timed out
LOG: MAIN
== example@postmaster.aol.com R=lookuphost T=remote_smtp defer (110): Connection timed out
When attempting a manual telnet test from my server to AOL's mail server at , it also times out with the following:
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host: Connection timed out
The AOL support tech explained that if my server IP were being blocked, it would return messages with a block error code instead of timing out. They suggested my firewall was blocking AOL's server....but both my data center and server management company said that isn't the case.
Because I can't duplicate this problem with anyone but AOL accounts, I don't know what else to troubleshoot or look for. I know AOL is notorious for blocking IPs and most email related problems are usually for lack of rDNS, but neither of those issues are the problem in this situation...so I don't know what else to try. My server management company (PSM) and AOL (once they finally elevated me to a real tech support person), have been very patient and helpful....but we still haven't been able to identify the problem and I feel incompetent for not being able to contribute on my own. I've researched for weeks and certainly understand more than I did, but still far less than they do.
AOL did direct me to a Windows Server troubleshooter relating to UDP packet size limitations with some firewalls that could cause MX query timeouts with AOL, Earthlink and Quest...but because I'm on an Apache server...I didn't know if that could be related at all to my issues (not to mention that I didn't even know what any of that meant until I went and looked up what a UDP packet actually was. I'm still not entirely sure I understand it). Even so, I did send the information to Platinum Server Management a short while ago, but haven't heard back yet.
Anyways.... in the meantime, I thought I'd check here in case anyone else had the same issue or saw something obvious we might not be considering.
My server details are as follows. I included my data center and management company details to illustrate that people far more qualified and intelligent than myself have performed the most common and obvious troubleshooters so far:
Pentium IV 2.8GHz /1GB DDRAM /120GB EIDE HDD
OS: CentOS 4.3
cPanel/WHM
Main Server IP: 66.79.163.138
Example Domain on the server: vedadesigns.net
Data Center: Dediwebhost.com (awesome service & fast support)
Initial Server Setup & Management: Platinum Server Management (I just can't say enough good things about these people)
APF (on my server) often blocks me and some other browsers but I don't want it to do this. Let me give the last one log below;
Code: May 26 09:38:01 linux apf(9884): (insert) deny all to/from 85.101.x.x (my ip) After 20 minutes automaticly deleting the block. May 26 09:58:02 linux apf(11064): {delete} deny all to/from 85.101.x.x
does aynone know how to modify the file /etc/network/interfaces (using debian linux) in order to have 2 different 8 IP - Blocks on one server? I guess one needs somehow 2 gateways, but I am not really sure how to set it up. So I did try it that way, which didn´t work: ....
This weird issue has poped up only this weekend , when csf blocks all ips and even ssh, email and all services are not accesible, even though server is working, but firewall puts a block on everyone, and appears offline to others, any ideas why csf and iptables are not responding and acting in this behavior, i asked jonesolutions.com last time it happened i got no reason/response which could be the culprit.
Could it be the kernel update/upgrade that was done, to optimize load which broke csf and its working?
as this is 2nd incident over last 2 days , and i had thought my management had fixed it. Upset here over the unwanted for no reason downtimes!
Here is the output for this command after i restart csf again, and thats like average too i get over the entire day.
This came as a surprise today, I setup a server-based RSS reader and could not get WHT's forum RSS feeds. A little digging revealed it was the default APF installation that was blocking the 174.0.0.0/8 range, which includes WHT and a chunk of Softlayer's ip range.
The quick fix is easy, just remove that range from the /etc/apf/internals/reserved.networks file and restart, in the latest apf version, I don't know how many apf versions back this block goes.
The APF folks do a fantastic job in keeping APF up to date, but this seems to be recent update to this particular ip range that hasn't made it into APF yet.
Does any one else use the free hosting byethost and have problems with them blocking user agents like googlebots and phpld site verification agents?
Otherwise their hosting is good but a huge drawback is that Google is blocked from accessing my site and I cannot get back links in many phpld directories because they cannot verify my site as their user agent is banned by the host.
If you upgrade to a paid account are these restrictions removed?
I recently got a dedi from Hivelocity, and they installed CSF/LFD. On my previous hosts, I didn't have this, just cPHulk. With this dedi, I'm receiving nearly a dozen daily emails from LFD with IPs that have been blocked for multiple failed logins, mostly with username root, but also sales, staff, admin, system, etc., and a few for port scanning.
Is this normal? I've already disabled direct root login via SSH, and I'm not really worried about anyone actually managing to gain access, I'm just curious about the high number of attempts. On previous hosts, where I actually had active sites and forums, with links posted on other forums that are indexed and nicely ranked by Google, I rarely received any emails from cPBrute at all.
One of my friends has a web server that runs Jetty. And he's having issues with users using Safari getting blocked by Jetty through a login process. The result after attempting to login is a 404 error. That just says machine blocked and URI=
and then below powered Jetty://.
This only happens with Safari.. I was wondering if anyone had any ideas on what could be causing this or is familiar with Jetty?
I just uninstall apf and install csf firewall on 4 servers
There is a problem after that. 2 of the server actually was OFFLINE by 12 midnight sharp yesterday night. This is the second time (second day) it happens. I went into the datacenter and
#ping yahoo.com *Host not found*
#service csf stop #ping yahoo.com *Responding*
So how is this related to eth0 making my server offline by itself? Was it Iptable problem or Csf problem? or Kernel problem?
i cant sent emails to Hotmail from my domains so make a Spam Database Lookup from dnsstuff for my main ip 72.249.101.164 here are the results "72.249.101.164 has no reverse DNS entry; some mail servers may not accept your mail." and i also not listed to any database.
Can someone check the and tell me if
- RDNS are ok
- and if this spam databases include Hotmai spam databases?
My hosting provider tell me that RDNS are ok and that Hotmail black listed the server IP
I have Comcast Business PRO Internet service for work purposes. I've got two web/dns servers and two mail servers, each having their own IP. These are all fine.
There had been a couple situations in the past where I would receive a "Relaying Denied" message from my PINE when sending mail out. At examination of the maillog, It's essentially telling me that these messages are being generated because of the lack of reverse DNS.
xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx-Oregon.hfc.comcastbusiness.net., instead of my.domain.com.
I did a couple searches on Google, and read somewhere that Comcast is unwilling to create rDNS entries, but they've not specified, so far, whether they subscribe to PRO or residential service.
Before I spend 90 minutes on the phone with Comcast, I thought I'd see if anybody here has been successful with rDNS and Comcast PRO before. It seems to me that by denying this, it defeats the purpose of the "dedicated" service that I signed up with ...
I set rdns by contacting the dedicated server host. I am switching to a colo environment soon, do I still contact the ISP who issues the IPs for the rdns requests or can I set them myself somehow on my servers?
If I eventually get my own IPs through ARIN, how do I set rdns? Do I just get some script to set the PTR records on my own servers?
I have two ISP lines coming to my router which is connected to a Exchange mail server. Both ISP has given me dedicated IP addresses such as:
ISP1 = 217.105.25.94 ISP2 = 62.15.125.44
Now my ISP1 IP address has a reserve DNS set and when the mails are send via this line no problem, but my ISP2 IP does not have a reverse DNS so some mails are bouncing back due to the face the receiving mail server is checking the IP against the DNS.
How can I solve this issue, or normally who can set this rDNS?
Just got set up with a new VPS and while looking to see if my IPs were blacklisted, I came across a RDNS warning. I've been on some form of shared hosting since I've been on the Internet, so much of the VPS stuff is new to me (though it is managed). Everything I've read says that RDNS is important for sending mail so the receiving end can verify where mail is coming from, but I thought I would ask here regarding my specific issue.
I've got four IPs on my account. The first ip, x.x.x.67, is the host IP(ie host.example.com). Most of my domains are using that IP at the moment since I just got set up, but I do have another domain on the last IP in my account, x.x.x.70. When I first did a RDNS check on my main IP I got a domain that I've never seen before, and all other IPs on my account don't resolve at all.
I sent a ticket off to the host, and they set the RDNS record correctly for the main IP on my account, but the other three still fail to resolve. When I asked the host about it in a ticket, the response that I got was
Quote:
Normally, we set RDNS for the main IP address to hostname of the server.
The RDNS for your server has been setup properly. Please get back to us if you need any further assistance.
So basically I'm clueless. Does it matter that the other three IPs I have available don't resolve at all? The domain on the x.x.x.70 IP, which doesn't resolve, is an e-commerce site that depends almost exclusively on e-mail for its business. Doesn't the lack of RDNS resolution mean that I'll be out of luck sending mail to AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc etc on that account? Even though I don't have sites on the middle two IP addresses yet, I fully plan to put sites there within the next couple of months... could they have the same problem?
It's frustrating since I obviously have no control over RDNS records, and the host's staff is being a little obtuse about it.
we use CentOS Linux 7.0.1406 (Core) Plesk Version 12.0.18 Update #26 I got reports of several users on my system, and i can confirm this myself, that fail2ban is blocking courier imap and postfix connections when i try to connect to the Plesk Server with Outlook 2013 and theBat and the Apple Mac Mail Client.
I used the correct login information but fail2ban blocked the IPs for no obvious reason:
Code:
2014-12-03 12:46:57,908 fail2ban.actions[920]: WARNING [plesk-postfix] Ban 82.134.94.102 2014-12-03 12:46:58,049 fail2ban.actions[920]: WARNING [plesk-courierimap] Ban 82.134.94.102 I disabled the two jails now and it works perfectly. But why is fail2ban blocking valid requests ? I tried it myself and i did not enter a wrong password or something. MaxRetry is 5 so this should not be a problem. The problem is not affecting all users but just a few. However all of them are using correct credentials so i dont understand why they are being blocked at all.
This is the output at RIPE NCC's web update interface:
***Info: Authorisation for parent [inetnum] 193.53.87.0 - 193.53.89.255 using mnt-domains: authenticated by: ITECH-MNT
***RDNS: (related to ns1.infinitetech.in, ns2.infinitetech.in) ERROR (20 points):
Could not get an SOA record from ns1.infinitetech.in, ns2.infinitetech.in (193.53.87.2).
***RDNS: (related to set) ERROR (20 points):
The IP address 193.53.87.2 is identical for the nameserver(s) ns1.infinitetech.in, ns2.infinitetech.in found in the submitted domain object.
***Error: There are 20 or more problem points. Delegation was not successful. This is what I am trying to submit:
domain: 87.53.193.in-addr.arpa descr: Reverse Delegation for Infinite Technologies admin-c: ITGR-RIPE tech-c: ITGR-RIPE zone-c: ITGR-RIPE mnt-by: ITECH-MNT nserver: ns1.infinitetech.in nserver: ns2.infinitetech.in changed: noc@infinitetech.in 20080101 source: RIPE password: secret_here Following the guide available at: [url]
Now, how do I create the SOA record on a cPanel based server? I created a new zone, rdns.infinitetech.in and now what? I don't see SOA record option at all in the drop down list!
Unless I misunderstood what an SOA record is, I have no idea how to implement rDNS. Anyone?
If any RIPE NCC member/participant is available to answer this question directly it would be awesome! Others, give it your shot - I do understand that most of you are ARIN members/participants.
I don't know much about technical details of mail servers. But i want to discuss a serious problem i am facing now. I have a reseller account with jodohost. I am not a reseller but i need this to host 20 of my own and client sites. During last few days no. of emails coming to us dropped almost 60% and suddenly i found that i was not getting emails from few of my clients. Then today i got a call from two of them and they said that all emails they were sending to me, were bouncing back.I asked them for a copy of bounced emails which they sent to my gmail account and i forwarded it to my jodohost support. This the response i got-
All of our mail servers have reverse DNS and mails are delivered. anyone not having rDNS is not able to mail much of the internet already, they really must talk to their system administrators and get reverse DNS setup.
Now they say that my clients do not have rdns at their mail servers and emails from them can not be delivered to my account.
Is rdns compulsory to send emails from a mail server these days?
But in that case i may not get emails from so many inquires?
I have a problem with a client whose mails are getting rejected because it fails rdns check, can any one tell me how to add this domain in Exim's whitelist so that the mail is sent/recieved even if rdns or any other checks fail.
