[Dovecot] Bit of a Newbie Question
Apologies in advance - I'm sure there's something quite obvious I'm not doing correctly, but since I'm unable to resolve the problem myself....
I've installed Dovecot 99.14 on FreeBSD-CURRENT using the Dovecot FreeBSD port. My "network" consists of a cable modem connected to a router which is in turn connected (only) to my computer. My ISP assigns a dynamic IP address. I have ddclient set up to sync the dynamic IP to my hostname and MX via dyndns.org.
Local operations (local delivery via Postfix or copying/moving/deleting with Thunderbird) work fine. Mail delivery from remote machines does not seem to work via either IMAP or IMAP-SSL. (That is, test e-mails I send from this [Fastmail] account to my local IMAP server never reach their destination.) Enabling port forwarding on my router for ports 993 and 143 has made no difference.
What should I be doing to make this work correctly?
Jud
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, Jud wrote:
Apologies in advance - I'm sure there's something quite obvious I'm not doing correctly, but since I'm unable to resolve the problem myself....
I've installed Dovecot 99.14 on FreeBSD-CURRENT using the Dovecot FreeBSD port. My "network" consists of a cable modem connected to a router which is in turn connected (only) to my computer. My ISP assigns a dynamic IP address. I have ddclient set up to sync the dynamic IP to my hostname and MX via dyndns.org.
Local operations (local delivery via Postfix or copying/moving/deleting with Thunderbird) work fine. Mail delivery from remote machines does not seem to work via either IMAP or IMAP-SSL. (That is, test e-mails I send from this [Fastmail] account to my local IMAP server never reach their destination.) Enabling port forwarding on my router for ports 993 and 143 has made no difference.
What do you mean with "Mail delivery via IMAP"? It is up to your MTA and LDA (postfix, I presume) to deliver these mails into a folder where the imap server can find them. This has little to do with dovecot.
Check your postfix configuration... or, your provider may be blocking access to port 25. Many providers do.
What should I be doing to make this work correctly?
Jud
Wouter Van Hemel wrote:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, Jud wrote:
Apologies in advance - I'm sure there's something quite obvious I'm not doing correctly, but since I'm unable to resolve the problem myself....
I've installed Dovecot 99.14 on FreeBSD-CURRENT using the Dovecot FreeBSD port. My "network" consists of a cable modem connected to a router which is in turn connected (only) to my computer. My ISP assigns a dynamic IP address. I have ddclient set up to sync the dynamic IP to my hostname and MX via dyndns.org.
Local operations (local delivery via Postfix or copying/moving/deleting with Thunderbird) work fine. Mail delivery from remote machines does not seem to work via either IMAP or IMAP-SSL. (That is, test e-mails I send from this [Fastmail] account to my local IMAP server never reach their destination.) Enabling port forwarding on my router for ports 993 and 143 has made no difference.
What do you mean with "Mail delivery via IMAP"?
As noted above, "That is, test e-mails I send from this [Fastmail] account to my local IMAP server never reach their destination." In slightly more detail, mail sent using Fastmail's SMTP-SSL server, mail.messagingengine.com:465, does not arrive in my local IMAP Inbox.
It is up to your MTA and
LDA (postfix, I presume) to deliver these mails into a folder where the imap server can find them. This has little to do with dovecot.
Check your postfix configuration... or, your provider may be blocking access to port 25. Many providers do.
As also noted above, local delivery via Postfix appears to work fine. For example, ddclient is configured to send failure or success messages to user "jud," and indeed these messages appear in the local IMAP Inbox for "jud."
Apologies for having caused confusion by referring to "mail delivery" and Postfix. I am not having any problem *sending* mail at all. The problem is that messages sent from a remote machine (using port 465 from a mail server not owned by my ISP) are not received in my local IMAP Inbox, while messages sent from the local machine are.
I agree that Dovecot is not doing anything wrong. I am hoping someone may be able to help me learn what *I* am doing wrong.
What should I be doing to make this work correctly?
Jud
Jud wrote:
Wouter Van Hemel wrote:
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, Jud wrote:
Apologies in advance - I'm sure there's something quite obvious I'm not doing correctly, but since I'm unable to resolve the problem myself....
I've installed Dovecot 99.14 on FreeBSD-CURRENT using the Dovecot FreeBSD port. My "network" consists of a cable modem connected to a router which is in turn connected (only) to my computer. My ISP assigns a dynamic IP address. I have ddclient set up to sync the dynamic IP to my hostname and MX via dyndns.org.
Local operations (local delivery via Postfix or copying/moving/deleting with Thunderbird) work fine. Mail delivery from remote machines does not seem to work via either IMAP or IMAP-SSL. (That is, test e-mails I send from this [Fastmail] account to my local IMAP server never reach their destination.) Enabling port forwarding on my router for ports 993 and 143 has made no difference.
What do you mean with "Mail delivery via IMAP"?
As noted above, "That is, test e-mails I send from this [Fastmail] account to my local IMAP server never reach their destination." In slightly more detail, mail sent using Fastmail's SMTP-SSL server, mail.messagingengine.com:465, does not arrive in my local IMAP Inbox.
It is up to your MTA and
LDA (postfix, I presume) to deliver these mails into a folder where the imap server can find them. This has little to do with dovecot.
Check your postfix configuration... or, your provider may be blocking access to port 25. Many providers do.
As also noted above, local delivery via Postfix appears to work fine. For example, ddclient is configured to send failure or success messages to user "jud," and indeed these messages appear in the local IMAP Inbox for "jud."
Apologies for having caused confusion by referring to "mail delivery" and Postfix. I am not having any problem *sending* mail at all. The problem is that messages sent from a remote machine (using port 465 from a mail server not owned by my ISP) are not received in my local IMAP Inbox, while messages sent from the local machine are.
I agree that Dovecot is not doing anything wrong. I am hoping someone may be able to help me learn what *I* am doing wrong.
What should I be doing to make this work correctly?
Jud
I'm fairly certain that this is a Postfix configuration issue, unless the sending SMTP server is "losing" the message if it's being rejected or the sending server can't be found.
Do you have anything like SpamAssassin or dspam in the mix?
Can you get Fastmail's Postmaster involved to check the outgoing message logs?
Does it work when sending from a Yahoo or Hotmail account?
There's some troubleshooting to go here. I will also suggest the Postfix mailing list (see http://www.postfix.org) if you can't figure out anything from their documentation. You can always post your results from 'postconf -n' to their list for additional assistance (after searching the archives for help first, of course!)
RobertC
On Wed, 9 Mar 2005, Jud wrote:
Wouter Van Hemel wrote:
What do you mean with "Mail delivery via IMAP"?
As noted above, "That is, test e-mails I send from this [Fastmail] account to my local IMAP server never reach their destination." In slightly more detail, mail sent using Fastmail's SMTP-SSL server, mail.messagingengine.com:465, does not arrive in my local IMAP Inbox.
I understand that, but you should first check your MTA configuration, and see if postfix logs anything about receiving any connection at all.
When you know postfix saw the message and accepted it, then you can start investigating dovecot.
It is up to your MTA and
LDA (postfix, I presume) to deliver these mails into a folder where the imap server can find them. This has little to do with dovecot.
Check your postfix configuration... or, your provider may be blocking access to port 25. Many providers do.
As also noted above, local delivery via Postfix appears to work fine. For example, ddclient is configured to send failure or success messages to user "jud," and indeed these messages appear in the local IMAP Inbox for "jud."
But local isn't remote. There is relatively little that can go wrong with postfix locally delivering a message to a folder, and dovecot then picking it up from there on. Accepting email on a residential line with a dynamic ip over a SSL secured SMTP protocol in a spam-secured-by-default MTA is a whole other can of worms.
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.
Apologies for having caused confusion by referring to "mail delivery" and Postfix. I am not having any problem *sending* mail at all. The problem is that messages sent from a remote machine (using port 465 from a mail server not owned by my ISP) are not received in my local IMAP Inbox, while messages sent from the local machine are.
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).
I agree that Dovecot is not doing anything wrong. I am hoping someone may be able to help me learn what *I* am doing wrong.
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?
Forgot to cc the list on my reply to Wouter:
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 05:06:24 +0100 (CET), "Wouter Van Hemel" <wouter-dovecot@fort-knox.rave.org> said: [snip]
But local isn't remote. There is relatively little that can go wrong with postfix locally delivering a message to a folder, and dovecot then picking it up from there on. Accepting email on a residential line with a dynamic ip over a SSL secured SMTP protocol in a spam-secured-by-default MTA is a whole other can of worms.
Indeed, as I'm learning.
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?
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?
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! ;-)
Thanks to you and Robert Cooper for your assistance,
Jud
Forgot to cc the list on my reply to Wouter:
On Thu, 10 Mar 2005 05:06:24 +0100 (CET), "Wouter Van Hemel" <wouter-dovecot@fort-knox.rave.org> said: [snip]
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?
A good test would be to see if you can send a message from one computer inside your network to your mail server. Create an internal network of sorts. It sounds to me like you have a bit of reading to do on quite a few basics....
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?
There is no good way around this. About the only thing you could do is have another account store the incoming mail somewhere and you your local mail server do a "pull" of sorts using something like "fetchmail" or something. ...or petition your ISP to unblock port 25 (unlikely) or see if they have a "business class" type plan that will give you a static IP and hopefully unblocked port 25.
Run some of the tests @ http://dnsstuff.com and see if they can connect to any of your serivces. Also, from the outside, simply telnet to port 25 of your server and see if it is listening.
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! ;-)
How else would you expect to get information?!
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?
There is no good way around this. About the only thing you could do is have another account store the incoming mail somewhere and you your local mail server do a "pull" of sorts using something like "fetchmail" or something. ...or petition your ISP to unblock port 25 (unlikely) or see if they have a "business class" type plan that will give you a static IP and hopefully unblocked port 25.
Look into rollernet.us. They offer a free smtp redirection service where they are listed as your MX, and accept connections for your domain on port 25, and forward the message back out to your smtp server on any port you specify. See http://rollernet.us/services.php?smtp
participants (5)
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F. Even
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Jud
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Robert Cooper
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Steve
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Wouter Van Hemel