[Dovecot] Bit of a Newbie Question

[Wouter Van Hemel]

On Thu, 10 Mar 2005, Jud wrote:

>> You have not yet told us if you actually can receive email from outside;
>> both with respect to your MTA configuration and an open (i.e. not
>> firewalled) internet ip.
>
> I will have to investigate my MTA configuration.  It's not clear to me
> what is meant by an "open (not firewalled) internet ip."  What
> can/should I do on my system to create this condition?
>

Well, you should have an ip that is publicly accessible for mail servers 
on the internet, especially for the ones you expect will forward email.

If your provider has a firewall for its customers that disallows access to 
certain ports (such as 25 and 80), you simply can not receive email (by 
SMTP).

Perhaps FastMail will allow you to specify a specific port, but I doubt it.

IMO, it's not a good idea to run a mailserver on a residential line with a 
dynamic ip; likely the contract with your isp even forbids this. Ofcourse, 
it's up to you to decide and try anyway.

>> There is no difference for dovecot. For now, I'd say rather that the
>> problem is either that your MTA doesn't accept email, or that your isp
>> firewalls port 25 (which is rather likely on a dynamic ip home
>> connection).
>
> It is probably true that my isp blocks port 25; it will be easy to
> determine for sure.  If so, are there any solutions you can suggest?
>

Do you have any accounts on remote servers? Just do a

   'telnet your_internet_ip 25'

... or something along those lines.

If not, try an online open relay testing service such as the one ordb 
provides:

   http://www.ordb.org/submit/

Be sure to enable test feedback.

It will probably tell you enough for you to find out if it can reach your 
server or not.

>> Read the MTA logs. See if there is any connection at all. If there is,
>> check what happens with the messages (refused?). If there is not, you
>> either are not accepting connections on your outside interface, or your
>> provider has blocked access to port 25.
>>
>> Did you receive any bounces?
>
> Yes, though I deleted them, not even thinking to read them for
> information.  However, it is quite simple for me to create more bounces!
> ;-)
>

Do so, and read the actual error message.

This has very little to do with dovecot...